Market Overview

Biochemical reagents are used for a wide variety of studies from basic researches such as biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology, etc., to applied researches in the industrial sectors including medicine, diagnostic agents, chemicals, and agricultural and fishery products. Biochemical reagents vary from biological components such as amino acid, protein, glucose, lipid, nucleic acid, etc. to those reagents for researching immunochemistry, cellular biology, culture studies, etc. As advancement especially of genetic engineering and immune cell studies is remarkable in recent years, a variety of new reagents for researches have been generated in accordance with new technologies.

The domestic market of biological reagents for studies tends to be affected significantly by the governmental budget size (especially the budgets at MEXT [Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology], MHLW and MAFF). Particularly, universities and national as well as public research institutions which are said to occupy approximately 70% of the reagent users are heavily affected. The governmental budget for bio-related research and development does not show significant growth except for some segments, with steady R&D expenses at private companies also declining.

Noteworthy Topics

Research and Development for Cancer Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has drawn attention as a new cancer treatment method and has been vigorously studied. It is expected as the fourth method to treat cancer, following the traditional surgery, chemotherapy (anticancer agent), and radiation. In 2018, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was given to the researchers involving in the development of “Opdivo (generally called Nivolumab)”, an immune checkpoint inhibitor that nullifies the “brake” effect of immune cells to cancer cells. This indicates how high the interest in immunotherapy is.

Such a trend has invigorated the immunotherapy studies at public and private R&D institutions. As the demand for reagents used in such studies is high, the companies dealing in reagents are expanding their product lines as their growth area. As eagerness for immunotherapy studies is projected to continue, the reagent market trends continue to be the focus of attention.

Future Outlook

The domestic biological reagent market is likely to increase very slightly or to level off, affected by the end of a large-scale governmental project and diminished R&D investment at private companies. The market size of biological reagents for studies, based on shipment values at manufacturers, is projected to rise slightly to 122,610 million yen, 101.7% on a YoY basis.

Because the market is saturated, each reagent manufacturer currently focuses on finding out new research areas. As the research and development has sped up recently, the demand has been changing rapidly. Therefore, manufacturers are needed to grasp the study trends and to connect them into new product development.  

Research Outline