Abstract

Currently Worth a Few Million Dollars, The Emerging Organs-on-Chips Market has the Potential to Become a Multi-Billion Dollar Market

Marjorie Villien, Technology & Market Analyst - Microfluidic & Medical Technologies, Yole Développement

Bringing a new drug to market is one of the longest and most costly paths any industry has to walk. The pharmaceutical industry therefore needs more predictive tools to make drug candidates fail earlier and cheaper. Other industries where toxicity testing is a major concern, such as cosmetics, agro-food and consumer goods, also need such solutions, in particular because animal testing is now banned for these industries in certain geographical areas. Several options have been envisioned, the most promising of which is certainly organs-on-chips. As a sign of confidence in this technology, significant funding has been allocated to organs-on-chips developers: DARPA and the NIH respectively awarded $140M and $76M over 5-year periods to support developments. In parallel, technology developers have raised more than $80M since 2012 with investors. But despite promises that make industrial players dream, we can barely speak about a real market today. Yole’s analysts estimate the combined sales of organs-on-chips devices and service offerings at no more than $7.5M in 2016. Indeed, very few players are already in the production and commercialization phase. Depending on the speed of adoption, and on the ability of organs-on-chips companies to overcome technical challenges and to upscale production, Yole’s analysts will detail different scenarios in which the market could grow at a compound annual growth rate from 2017-2022 of 38-57% to reach $60M-$117M in 2022. And this is only a first step. There is no doubt such technologies have the potential to become a multi-billion dollar market in the mid- to long-term future, given the billions of dollars they could help the industry to save every year.