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The nanomedicine market: small particles - big business
Nanoparticles have the tremendous potential to change the course of diagnostics and therapy [1]. An increasing number of products, whose therapeutic efficacy has been enhanced by their nanoscale dimensions, are already available on the fast emerging nanomedicine market [2-4]. Moreover, hundreds of nanobased products are currently in different stages of the preclinical and clinical development phase [5]. The Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission revealed that 76% of publications and 59% of patents involve the drug delivery segment, dominating the nanomedicine market [4,6-7]. With 11% of publications and 14% of patents, in vitro diagnostics receives the silver medal in this continuously growing market [4,6-7].
Also, the report released by the JRC reveals that, with a share of 53%, the USA is world leader in number of patent applications in the field of nanobased drug delivery. According to the same report, Europe submitted only 25% of these patent applications. With a significantly lower share of 12%, Asia can be found on the final end of this ranking. Consequently, Europe is also less competitive in the area of nanobased drug delivery in comparison with the USA. Most nanoparticle contrast agents are also currently produced by US companies [7]. Indeed, at present, 46% of US pharma are involved in the commercialization of nanomedicine products, while European firms have a share of only 37% [7]. Moreover, 74% of nanomedicine products currently on the market are produced by US companies [7]. In the future, this gap between the USA and Europe will probably widen further since US firms are involved in 54% of development of nanotechnology-based products that are in the pipeline, compared with only 34% of European companies [7]. In contrast, when looking at publications, Europe has the highest share (36%), followed by the USA (32%) and Asia (18%) [4,6-7]. Clearly, European countries have difficulties in translating their research findings into commercially viable applications.
Finally, the Freedonia Group Inc. released a report concerning the demand and sales of nanotherapeutics. They report that the demand will increase by more than 17% per year in the USA only. Sales will increase from US$53 billion in 2011 to an expected US$110 billion in 2016, for all nanomedical products. Over a period...