Drug Discovery Informatics Market Size

Drug Discovery Informatics Market Analysis

The drug discovery informatics market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 10.6% during the forecast period.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, countries' health systems were heavily invested in research and development to combat the virus. Research groups worldwide set about identifying small-molecule drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Thus, information technology-supported drug discovery and design were widely employed in the COVID-19 drug development. For instance, as per the article published in March 2022 in PubMed, a 694 amino acid (aa) multiepitope vaccine was created using a proposed artificial intelligence (AI)-based vaccine discovery facility. This vaccine was able to fight SARS-CoV-2 viral infection with good antigenicity, population coverage, and good physicochemical properties and structures. It offered great potential for the next stage of COVID-19 vaccine design with actual clinical trials. Thus, such AI-related drug development significantly impacted the growth of the studied market during the pandemic and is expected to witness notable growth in the coming years.

Factors driving the market growth include high R&D expenditure by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for drug discovery and development and increasing technological advancement in data mining and analytics. In February 2022, UK-based Automata Labs raised USD 50 million to automate the lab research process. Similarly, in July 2021, Strateos raised USD 56 million for further improving its SmartLab platform and its remote robotized, automated technology, available to preclinical researchers across the globe. Also, in March 2022, ArrePath, a drug discovery startup, raised USD 20 million in a seed funding round. The Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Insight Partners, and Innospark Ventures led it. The investment will support the company's machine learning-based drug discovery platform, which focuses on developing new anti-infective drugs to combat antimicrobial resistance. Rising investment in research and development is expected to drive market growth over the forecast period.

Moreover, increasing technological advancement in drug discovery platforms is expected to grow the market over the forecast period. For instance, in October 2021, PyTorch launched a machine-learning drug discovery platform, TorchDrug, to accelerate drug discovery research. This library is open-sourced and can be installed through PIP if PyTorch and torch-scatter are installed. Also, strategic expansion by the key regional players to increase their presence is expected to contribute to market growth. For instance, in February 2023, Insilico Medicine opened its Insilico Medicine Generative Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing Research and Development Center in Abu Dhabi, the region's largest AI-powered biotechnology research center.

Thus, due to the increasing research and development investment coupled with strategic activities by the key players, the studied market is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period. However, high pricing and setup costs for informatics software are expected to restrain the market's growth during the forecast period.