Developments In Drug Discovery Procedures Will Drive The Anti-Infective Drugs Market

The global anti-infective drugs market is expected to grow from $94.5 billion in 2019 to $115.2 billion in 2022 at an annual growth rate of 6.8%. The anti-infective drugs market is expected to benefit from the latest developments in drug discovery procedures such as stem cells and organ-on-chip (OOC) technologies. OOCs are micro-engineered biometric systems that simulate the activities, mechanics and physiological responses of organ systems. Drug trial processes such as target identification, validation, and screening are being executed through OOC and stem cell technologies. These technologies are considerably reducing the drug discovery costs and generating reliable predictions on drug efficiency and human safety. Another area of development is physiology-simulation modelling, in which the integrated physiology of the human organism, in both health and disease, is simulated through a computer program. Eli Lilly and Pfizer have adopted Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform to conduct simulation models in early stages of the drug discovery process that are operational within hours, whereas traditional models take weeks to conduct simulations. The wide adoption of these technologies is expected to drive the global anti-infective drugs market in the forecast period.

Drug discovery is the process of identifying potential new drugs. Drug discovery involves a wide range of scientific disciplines, such as biology, chemistry and pharmacology. This process includes identification of candidates, synthesis, characterization, screening and assays for therapeutic efficacy. It can be further classified into target discovery, the process of identifying and characterizing the properties of the biologically relevant target that generally lasts from two to three years, and screening/lead identification, the process that involves the identification of candidate molecules and compounds with the potential to treat the medical condition or disease, and it generally lasts from half a year to a year. Once the lead drug candidates are developed, they undergo preclinical trials and clinical trials.

Digital technologies such as big data analytics are increasingly being used in the pharmaceutical industries. Companies involved in drug discovery and development are leveraging big data to analyze current clinical trials data, identify problems and their subsequent solutions, and direct their marketing activities towards public interest.

Another technological development benefitting the global anti-infective drugs market growth is 3D printing. Anti-infective drugs manufacturing companies are increasingly adopting 3D printing technology in the development and manufacturing processes of anti-infective drugs to reduce manufacturing costs and increase production efficiencies. 3D printing is the process of making three-dimensional solid objects from a digital image. In 2018, a 3D printed fluorescence imaging box (PFIbox) was developed in McMaster University’s laboratory for antibiotics discovery. This box is capable of analyzing more than 6,000 samples of bacteria at a time and providing vital information on bacterial response.