A very futuristic approach of Life Sciences is on the way. New in vitro diagnostics systems, new therapy strategies, genetic diseases treatment, targeted and intelligent drug delivery, artificial pancreas… are health improvement promised to the future generations, enabled by semiconductor and MEMS technologies. The Life Sciences industry is already facing very important challenges to take its way to this expected innovation breakthrough.
Such future of Life Sciences will be possible by bringing together many different technologies like microelectronics, mechanics, optics, physics, molecular biology… Indeed microelectronics that has led to the explosion of consumer electronics sales could now bring its added value to different to the Life Science applications. The key challenge for microelectronics is to make complexity invisible, to make technology accurate, reproducible and intuitive for a natural use. They are already used for drug delivery dedicated products.
This expected evolution in the Life Sciences field requires thus teams from different background to collaborate and to understand the challenges each other is facing in its own domain. It involves being able to understand the biological ins and out as well as challenges to work together in identifying an innovative solution to propose.
To take part in this innovation process, it is very important to understand the technology and industrial trends by having a good view on the current technologies used, their limits and advantages, the applications and the way Life Science is working.
The Life Sciences field is considered as a very attractive field to target for the next innovation to launch. Some companies already succeed as shows the Affymetrix success story. In a little more than 10 years, using its technology coming from the semiconductor field and with key agreements with Life Science companies (Roche, Novartis, Aventis, BMS, bioMérieux…), Affymetrix is now dominating the biochip market worldwide with more than 70% market shares.
Several semiconductor companies are involved in Life Sciences like STMicroelectronics, Philips, Agilent… and several others have stopped their activity like Motorola, Infineon… Entering the Life Sciences field could be complex since it is a very broad field including many different industries like drug discovery, in vitro diagnostic, medical devices, instrumentation…
The market is much segmented in term of applications, technologies and medical use. Each field has its own specificity in term of industry organization, added value chain, industrial players, R&D activities, drivers and market entry barriers, entry point in the supply chain, position in the value chain… For example, selling devices is not always the best way to maximise the added value compared to a module/function approach. One of the main challenges in entering the Life Sciences field is to define the value of the technology to propose in this business.
The purpose of the report is to provide a better understanding of Life Sciences to semi-conductor and MEMS companies, with a detailed analysis of the different application fields, market evaluation and strategy analysis for semiconductor and MEMS companies.
This report presents and describes the biological challenges ins and out. It highlights the specificities of the different Life Science industries and the business opportunities for semiconductor and MEMS companies. It also answers the question: “how could IC and MEMS companies become a key leader of the Life Sciences field?”
LifescienceIC report will introduce you to molecular biology with basic concepts presentation so that you get a better understanding of the biology field and challenges. We particularly describe biological compounds (nucleic acids, proteins, peptides, glycanes etc...), their size scales and interaction to highlight and make understandable the biological complexity.
A part of this report is also dedicated to the different existing techniques used today in molecular biology. We highlight the gold standard technologies per application field. Such information is required to get a technological and commercial competitive advantage. Sample preparation, PCR amplification, nucleic acids and proteins separation and detection, immunoassays, HPLC columns and mass spectrometry are examples of technologies described.
The industrial fields where semiconductor technology could be used will be presented, highlighting the market potential ($), players involved, and key specificities. The report also defines the attractive functions from semiconductor devices. It is illustrated by current products and developments.
The applications of semiconductor and MEMS devices are under analysis in the following markets:
- Life Sciences research
- Pharmaceutical industry
- Diagnostic
- Medicine
With devices such as microarrays, microfluidic- based devices, lab-on-chips, drug delivery devices, pressure sensors, accelerometers…
Best practices to enter the Life Sciences field are proposed in this report. They are based on analysis of industry key players: Affymetrix, Agilent, microParts, STMicroelectronics. The report also analyses past experience from Motorola to understand why such company has stopped its investments in Life Science applications.
The position of semiconductor companies in the value chain is discussed.
The report is bringing a lot of value to IC manufacturers, MEMS manufacturers, materi-als and equipment suppliers as well as system manufacturers so as to understand the business potential, the technology status and who is doing what for strategic and marketing decision making.
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Analysis of the applications and added value of semiconductor devices in life sciences: biological challenges, ins and out.