After months of back-and-forth, the United States Congress agreed to a $1.7 trillion spending bill for Fiscal Year 2023 on December 20, 2022, with President Biden signing it into law on December 29. The omnibus bill funds the federal government through September 30, 2023, and provides $195.2 billion for R&D funding, about a 10.3% increase from FY 2022.
As demonstrated by the introduction of novel mass spectrometry (MS) methods that add further dimensions to traditional MS, many next generation proteomics approaches aren’t attempting to reinvent the wheel. Rather, these new technologies build off and expand upon existing ones, including a new class of multiplex immunoassays that improve on the sensitivity or multiplexing abilities of conventional immunoassays like ELISA.
Mass spectrometry (MS) has long been a bedrock tool in proteomics investigations, with liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) especially key in analyzing the presence, identity, and quantity of proteins in a complex sample. But the expanding scope of proteomics research requires higher resolution than traditional MS techniques can offer, and as such, new sample preparation techniques that supplement and enhance MS workflows as well as novel MS approaches constitute a large swath of the next-gen proteomics market.
For seemingly everyone, the past few years have been turbulent in one way or an- other, as governments, industries, and individuals grappled with the consequences and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, although better understood and managed, persists. In some respects, the lab and analytical instruments market has been buffered from these effects; the industry, as a whole, has maintained its positive growth trajectory.
Since the term “proteome” first appeared in the scientific literature in 1995, interest in proteomics research and its use in applications like drug discovery, tumor characterization, and disease biomarker identification has exploded. With that growth has come a need for new approaches to catalog and study the proteome, as conventional techniques often fall short in accomplishing the specificity, sensitivity, and throughput required by ambitious emerging research efforts and applications.
Washington, DC-based conglomerate Danaher will separate its Environmental & Applied Solutions segment into a new, independent, publicly traded company. The new company will contain Danaher’s Water Quality and Product Identification businesses, including Hach, a manufacturer of water quality testing instruments and reagents, and X-rite, a manufacturer of spectrophotometers and other color analysis products. After the separation, which is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2023, Danaher will be composed of its Life Sciences and Diagnostics segments, including companies like Beckman Coulter, Leica Biosystems, and Integrated DNA Technologies.
Walk into any life sciences lab, and you’re bound to see beakers or other containers filled with discarded pipette tips on each bench top. Between tips, tubes, and plates, research runs on single-use plastic. Recent plastics price spikes, manufacturing shortages, and supply-chain disruptions have hobbled labs, and COVID testing and treatment research have amplified need for these items. For example, a lab technician might use ten pipette tips to run one coronavirus test, between handling the sample, the test reagents, and setting up the PCR reaction.
As global inflation remains the highest it’s been in several decades, about one-third of the global economy is expected to contract this year or next. In its October 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO): Countering the Cost-of-Living Crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects global growth will remain at 3.2% in 2022, unchanged from July’s forecast, and will drop to 2.7% in 2023, a 0.2% downgrade from that projection. Global inflation is expected to rise to 8.8% in 2022 but decline to 6.5% in 2023 and to 4.1% in 2024.
Across an R&D lab, there’s a torrent of data and an ever-expanding number of workflows to keep in check. And volume is not the only challenge; each analysis may require different data formats or sometimes even multiple formats within a technique. Keeping track of such data manually can be time consuming and prone to errors, and standard spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets is not equipped to understand and display chemical formulas or structures, which are essential components of processes like drug development.
With the continuation of the pandemic in 2022, the global economic recovery from COVID-19 has been hampered by periodic port shutdowns in China, continued supply-chain disruptions, and staffing challenges across industries. Since TDA’s 2022 Outlook was published, the war in Ukraine began, its being felt worldwide. Additionally, Europe is facing an energy crisis resulting from Russia’s cutting its supply of natural gas to Europe and resulting soaring energy costs. These factors are contributing to global Inflation, which threatens to curb economic growth worldwide.