Biochips: The Foremost Tool For Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine, often referred to as precision medicine are tailor-made medical models for individuals on the basis of their medical history, genetic makeup and lifestyle. The approach for using personalized medicine is now being seen as the future of medicine as the medical practitioners can direct their treatments at specific target health maladies and achieve maximum results.

Countries across the world are trying to incorporate this concept in their healthcare sectors. For instance, in 2017, the UK government invested nearly $8 million in technologies that would help businesses to meet and understand the challenges involved in developing personalized medicines. Such heavy investments are encouraging researchers to set up state-of-the-art labs for making further advancements in this technology. One such advancement is the use of biochips for personalized medicines.

What are biochips?

Biochips are essentially microarray devices that are often used as miniature laboratories to test various biochemical reactions within a living system. The various applications of biochips have accelerated the pace of the global biotechnological industry. Triton Market Research estimates the global biochip market to be worth millions. Overall, the global biochips market can be classified as DNA chips, Lab on a chip and protein chips.

For personalized medicines, all three varieties play a major role. The adoption of DNA chips has increased for the personalized medicines, especially for the ones targeted towards cancer treatment. DNA chips are increasingly being used by microbiologists all over the world for genotyping of multiple target regions in the genome and studying their protein expression levels. This data can then be used to identify the proteins associated with any particular disease. This profiling provides a major advantage in potential drug discovery. Scientists can, with the help of appropriate computer software, deploy target proteins for drug development.

Technological advancements in biotechnology research

Over the past two decades, the global biotechnological industry has witnessed a tremendous growth. Constant research in this area has opened the doors for several promising medical research fields like proteomics, genomics, genetic engineering, stem cell research and personalized medicines. These advancements have also had an impact on the global biochip market. The first ever biochips were based on sensor technology, which was way back in the 1920s when Watson and Crick were yet to discover the DNA double helix structure. Over the next few decades, biological research started gaining increased prominence leading to several innovations in biochips and biosensors.

Today, these researches are combined with technology, and the result has revolutionized the entire global healthcare sector. For instance, the digital microfluidics technology applications such as on-chip DNA analysis and point-of-care diagnosis are greatly aiding the automated drug discovery. Many biochip-based platforms for research have been developed that can generate detailed biological information at different levels such as gene, protein, tissues and cell levels.

Global biochips market prospective

The North American region dominates the global biochip industry. A major reason for this is the availability of high research funding from governments as well as pharma companies in the US and Canada. In fact, in the US, biochips account for over 17% of the overall R&D investments of pharmaceutical companies. The European region is close behind. According to the Biotech Conference Organization, in 2017 Europe spent nearly $7.32 billion in R&D for its biotechnology sector. Such investments help in boosting further research. Germany is a leading market when it comes to biochips. Biotechnology is a priority for the German government, and it is central to Germany’s innovation and economic policy, pertaining to which the German government invested nearly $1.5 billion in 2015.

The Asia-Pacific is expected to give much way for the biochips market to flourish in the region. Most of the APAC countries are emerging economies and thus the market potential in this region is yet unexplored. Countries like China, India and Japan have made much progress in the biochips industry. Major market companies like Agilent Technology Inc., Illumina Inc., Cephid Inc., Merck and Perkinelmer Inc. also have their presence in this region.