The healthcare market is poised to see some of the earliest benefits of nanotechnology. Over the next decade, it will be one of nanotech's highest growth sectors.
Targeted drug delivery therapies for the treatment of cancer is one of the most commonly cited nano-healthcare benefits. Cientifica's report, Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery 2011, gives a comprehensive analysis and geographic breakdown of the current nanotechnology drug delivery market and its most relevant technologies. It also provides a forecast for the size of total addressable markets and percent share of those key technologies to 2021.
Some forecasts have predicted the nanotechnology market to reach close to a trillion dollars by 2015, presenting investors with unique opportunities. However, the market for applications of nanotechnology is complex, multidisciplinary and highly segmented. It is therefore essential to gain an understanding of which market sectors nanotechnology is likely to impact most profoundly in the near term.
Since we now know most (if not all) biological processes occur at the nanoscale, the application of life science principles - studying the causes of biological phenomena at the molecular level - means medical and biomedical research is increasingly using a bottom-up (rather than the top-down) approach. The low bioavailability resulting from traditional oral and intravenous drug delivery methods and the market forces at work in the pharmaceutical industry, where patents expire after a relatively short period of time unless a novel form of drug delivery is developed that will extend the patent, are two major forces that will fuel the growth of the nanotech drug delivery market. The third factor at play is a combination of improved global health and a correspondingly dramatic increase in the size of the global aging population.
This report provides insight into the possibilities of targeted nanotech drug delivery and its market potential over the next decade.