North America Leads The Global Sequencing Market With More Than Half Of The Total Share

Sequencing is the process of determining the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids such as DNA or RNA. The global sequencing market is expected to grow from $7.9 billion in 2018 to $18.2 billion in 2023 at an annual growth rate of a little over 18%. North America was the largest region in the sequencing market in 2018, accounting for $4 billion or 51.2% of the total share. By country, the USA was the largest in the global sequencing market, accounting for $3.4 billion or 42.6% of the total market share. Large funding for medical research relating to cancer and other disease conditions by private and public organizations such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) by the federal government contributed to the higher share in the market than other regions globally. In April, 2018, HudsonAlpha Institute of Biotechnology, a research institute in Huntsville, Alabama, with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, received a $10 million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the newborn genome sequencing project. The genome sequencing project will help to diagnose birth defects and genetic disorders in newborns. Further, in October 2016, the National Human Genome Research Institute, a research institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided a grant of approximately $6.8 million to support six research projects developing the DNA and RNA sequencing technology.

Increased use of sequencing technologies, software and equipment to diagnose chronic disease conditions in North America also contributed to the share of the market. Major end-user industries of the sequencing market include scientific research and development services, pharmaceutical drugs, and medical and diagnostic laboratory services industries. North America was among the leading regions in each of these industries.

The global sequencing market is concentrated with a few large players dominating the market. Illumina, Inc., Myriad Genetics, Inc., and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. are all among the top five largest players in the market, and are based in the United States. Illumina, Inc. was the largest competitor in the sequencing market in 2017, with 33.1% share of the market. Illumina manufactures and markets sequencing and array platforms and reagent kits. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. Illumina provides sequencing and microarray systems, consumables, and analysis tools for genomic research centers, academic institutions, government laboratories, and hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, commercial molecular diagnostic laboratories, and consumer genomics companies. The company also provides whole-genome sequencing, genotyping, Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (NIPT), and product support services through its Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified, Certified Analytics Professional (CAP)-accredited laboratories.