According to the findings of a new report from BioInformatics, total spending by research scientists on synthetic DNA oligonucleotides (oligos) is over US$700 million annually
In the last decade, the demand for high quality oligonucleotides has risen with the focus on microarray technologies and antisense clinical research.
Oligos represent a lucrative market for life science suppliers because these tools are critical to a wide variety of research applications and they are constantly being consumed with each experiment performed.
Because the overall market for oligos is considered mature, suppliers are challenged to distinguish their brand from the many others available to scientists.
BioInformatics recently surveyed over 700 scientists who use synthetic oligos in their research.
The results of this survey are presented in a new report, the Global market for synthetic oligonucleotides.
This report follows its 2004 report, the US market for synthetic oligonucleotides, allowing the new report to offer some trend comparisons over the past two years.
For DNA oligos, respondents identified Integrated DNA Technologies as the dominant supplier.
The other top suppliers of DNA oligos are Invitrogen, MWG Biotech, Operon Biotechnologies, and Sigma-Genosys.
The full report presents the ranking information in terms of how many respondents chose each supplier as their 'preferred' supplier, as well as market share estimates based on both unit volume and revenue.
"The exact order of the ranking beyond the top spot varies depending on which metric you use to look at the market.
"Some suppliers have a greater share of the market in terms of sales than they do in terms of volume sold, and vice versa.
"Those suppliers with a relatively greater market share based on sales are able to charge a premium for their oligo services.
"Suppliers whose sales shares are much lower than their volume shares should consider ways to take advantage of their market share position to raise their prices," stated Tamara Zemlo, director of syndicated research and analysis for BioInformatics.
In addition to a thorough analysis of the DNA oligos market, the new report from BioInformatics includes extensive information on the market for RNA oligos as well.
Zemlo observed, "The market for RNA oligos is smaller than for DNA oligos, however the rapid adoption of RNA inhibition technology, combined with a renewed interest in antisense technology, has increased the demand for RNA oligos".
Top suppliers in the market for RNA oligos are Ambion, Dharmacon, Invitrogen, and Qiagen.
