The rising cost of drug development process has urged pharmaceutical companies to look out for ways to reduce the overall cost and time. The pharma industry turns towards highly specialized contract research organizations (CROs) who depict expertise in drug discovery assistance, regulatory compliance, lead identification, clinical data management, consultation, clinical trials, and project management. Pharmaceutical analytical testing is one of the research support services rendered by CROs and contract laboratories to pharmaceutical manufacturers. These organizations use various processes to analyze the intermediate drug ingredients and final drugs, so that the quality of the medication can be ensured. Toxicological risk assessments, environmental monitoring, clinical and non-clinical bioanalysis, stability testing, method validation, preclinical research, and biological assay development are some of the services under pharmaceutical analytical testing. The procurement market intelligence report predicts a healthy growth rate of 7.71% for the pharmaceutical testing market.
Trends in the Pharmaceutical Testing Market
Capability Enhancement Toward Analytical Testing of Biosimilars
Numerous drugs in the pharma industry are nearing the end of their patent lifetime. This has led pharmaceutical companies to divert their attention to biosimilars from biologics. Such move has motivated pharmaceutical testing companies to enhance their capabilities in the analytical testing of biosimilars. Compatibility studies for biosimilars, stability testing, product release testing, and protein analysis of biosimilars are some of the capabilities suppliers have been focusing. Consequently, enhancement of such capabilities reduces the risks associated with drug development.
Rising Demand from Nutraceuticals Industry
Traditionally, the pharmaceutical testing services were availed mainly by the pharmaceutical companies. However, today that trend looks to be slowly changing as nutraceuticals industry is also emerging as an active consumer of these services. This surge in demand can be attributed to increasing regulations for nutraceutical manufacturing companies demanding them to get their raw materials tested for quality and conduct release testing for their products.
Adoption of FTE-based Contracts
Since a long time, pharmaceutical testing service providers have been charging their clients on a per contract or per sample basis. Such pricing strategy is slowly changing as suppliers are looking to charge their clients on FTE-based contracts irrespective of workload, compound, or analytical technique used. The supplier allocates a dedicated team during the tenure of the project and manages the project resources along with the client. Such contracts ensure that the dedicated team members acquire a strong knowledge of the procedures and requirements of the project leading to fewer errors and higher consistency in the output.
Technological Advancements in Analytical Testing Equipment
The pharma industry is pressurizing pharmaceutical testing companies to reduce the testing time for drug ingredients forcing the suppliers to use advanced equipments and processes. For the same reason, the majority of the suppliers are now using HRAM instruments that allow users to identify the target molecule confidently. Additionally, several suppliers are now actively using morphologically-directed Raman spectroscopy, which is based on a combination of Ramana spectroscopy and automated imaging. Use of advanced equipment eliminates the need to perform multiple trials and subsequently increases the reliability and accuracy of pharmaceutical testing.
Read more about the trends in the pharmaceutical testing market along with sourcing strategies, pricing insights, top pharmaceutical analytical testing service providers, procurement challenges, and pricing models in SpendEdge’s upcoming report on the global pharmaceutical analytical testing services market.
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