Global Drug Discovery Outsourcing Market Size

Drug Discovery Outsourcing Market Analysis

The drug discovery outsourcing market is expected to register a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period.

COVID-19 had a significant impact on the drug discovery market owing to the high demand for vaccine discovery by various pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the past three years. Drug discovery outsourcing has become a key aspect of developing effective treatments against the virus. For instance, in June 2021, Catalent, Inc. collaborated with Moderna, Inc. for the manufacturing of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and potentially other investigational programs in Moderna's pipeline at Catalent's biologics facility in Bloomington, Indiana. Therefore, COVID-19 had a significant impact on the market growth as companies in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries were increasingly outsourcing research activities to CROs. These operations included both early-stage clinical development and fundamental research using in vitro and in vivo models. The market is expected to show a stable growth rate in the forecast period owing to the rising demand for cancer drug discovery outsourcing.

In addition, the increasing R&D in the biopharmaceutical industry and increasing demand for outsourcing services in drug development are actively affecting the growth of the studied market.

According to a review article published in the Indian Journal of Pharmacology in December 2022, outsourcing drug development services to contract research organizations (CROs) has become an important strategy for cost and risk reduction, capacity building, and data generation. The article reported that on a global basis, approximately one-third of the drug development processes are outsourced, and the data generated by independent third parties are well appreciated during regulatory submissions. Thus, drug discovery outsourcing will increase the success rate and the speed of the drug discovery process, which is expected to propel market growth during the forecast period.

Drug discovery is a lengthy and costly process. These reasons have forced pharmaceutical and biotech companies to opt for outsourcing these research activities to reduce the cost of developmnet. Many academic and private Contract Research Organizations (CROs) adopt strategic initiatives with pharmaceutical companies to assist them in developing the desired drug. For instance, in April 2021, Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. and Valence Discovery announced a strategic partnership to provide clients access to Valence's artificial intelligence platform for molecular property prediction and generative chemistry and accelerate preclinical drug discovery efforts. Also, in June of 2021, GenScript Biotech Corporation entered into a strategic licensing agreement for Ligand's OmniAb Platform, a multi-species antibody discovery platform, to generate highly diversified, fully human antibodies that are optimized in vivo for immunogenicity, manufacturability, and efficacy. The rising partnership leads to huge research and development spending on the drug discovery process, which is expected to augment the market growth during the forecast period.

Therefore, owing to the aforementioned factors, such as rising demand for drug discovery outsourcing and increasing strategic initiatives by market players, the studied market is anticipated to witness growth over the analysis period. However, the high cost of drug development and stringent regulations for drug manufacturing is likely to impede the market growth.