Impact Of Lifestyle Diseases On The Global Microbiome Market

The increased number of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cancer, depression, and many others in the historical period has positively affected the microbiome market. Lifestyle changes influence the micro flora internally at every stage of life, leading to lifestyle diseases, and thus altering the microbiome can help in minimising these lifestyle diseases. Worldwide since 1975 the obesity population has nearly tripled and now 30% of the population is obese. In recent studies, Fecal Microbiome Transplantation has shown beneficial results in treating patients with obesity and also diabetes. Thus, increasing lifestyle changes which lead to lifestyle diseases help drive the growth of the microbiome market.

The microbiome market consists of sales of bioactive molecules and related products which are used as immunotherapeutic agents in the pharmaceuticals industry. The microbiome market is primarily engaged in the development and sales of these bioactive products which are used as immunotherapy for a wide variety of conditions such as infectious diseases, endocrine & metabolic disorders, inflammatory conditions, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, neurological disorders, haematological disorders, and cardiovascular disease. The global microbiome market was valued at about $0.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to $0.7 billion at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% through 2023.

Stringent government regulations are expected to limit the growth of the microbiome market. Regulations or restrictions by the government bodies to use human microbiome as a therapy or a diagnostic tool can be challenging for the pharmaceutical companies engaged in microbiome production. For example, in 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a guidance stating that fecal micobiota transplatation (FMT) procedures are not subject to FDA enforcement which became challenging for the newly emerged companies involved in microbiome development. Recently in 2020, the FDA issued a safety alert for FMT procedures as this may aid in transmission of COVID-19 from the human donor. Thus, stringent government regulations restraint the growth of the human microbiome market.

A number of NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) programs and innovative approaches are being developed in the field of human microbiome. Sequencing of DNA present in a sample along with that of the bacteria which have been killed by the prophylactic treatment of the antibiotics is possible with the NGS technique. In 2019, Baseclear has increased its sequencing capacity by implementing Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform, which has an output of 3.0 Gb data per run. Technological advances such as software programs allow easy analyzing of the metagenomic datasets related to the genes of the microbiota along with user-friendliness, ease of access, and with ability to provide graphical representation for easy and quick understanding of the analyzed data. Specialized software programs available for analyzing the metagenomic data are FastQC, Fastx-Toolkit, PRINSEQ, and many others. Thus, technological advances and innovative approaches aid in the growth of the human microbiome market.