Access to advanced research tools will expand growth opportunities for CRO participants, finds Frost & Sullivan's Transformational Health team

SINGAPORE, June 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The clinical trials and research outsourcing (CRO) market is growing, leveraging the global pharmaceutical industry's urgent need to succeed in late clinical trials and build the pipeline of new molecules. While cost benefits, focus on core competencies, rise in innovative therapeutic options, and increased drug efficacy and safety norms will continue to encourage global pharma companies to outsource, CROs must increase their range of services to better serve, and become the preferred partner to, bio-pharmaceutical companies.

"Expanding CRO services into early stages of drugs, emergence of virtual biotech, out-licensing, and risk sharing between pharma and CROs are disrupting traditional business models," noted Transformational Health Research Analyst Sanjeev Kumar. "They are also opening up greater opportunities for CROs in terms of access to a huge market, newer areas such as commercial and post-launch, bioanalytical testing and development services, and partnerships with small-to-midsize biotech and virtual pharma customers."

Global CRO Market, Forecast to 2021, new research from Frost & Sullivan's Life Sciences Growth Partnership Service program, finds that the CRO market will reach revenues of US$64.58 billion by 2021. The study is an overview and analysis of the global CRO market by phase, therapeutic type, and region. It also profiles some of the game changers in the market, including SGS Life Sciences with its wide range of analytical, bioanalytical and clinical trial testing services and process management capabilities; LabCorp-Covance with its leading-edge clinical laboratory testing services; and WuXi AppTec, an integrated clinical trials company providing leading open-access R&D capability.

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"Globalization of trials, which is a prerequisite for drug development, continues to bolster pharma company outsourcing of research and drug clinical testing to CROs with a global presence, instead of employing their in-house R&D resources," said Kumar. "Offering specialized research technologies for drug development will help CROs compete against in-house R&D services."

Some avenues of strong growth for CRO market participants include:

• Mergers, acquisitions and collaborations to strengthen portfolios
• Expanding services into the early stage lifecycle of drugs to capture projects earlier in drug development
• Offering innovative technical capabilities in niche drug discovery
• Developing novel compounds, complex generic drugs and biosimilars
• Support services such as data management, biostatistics, health economic outcome research (HEOR), and central laboratory services
• Phase III clinical trials, which accounted for 21.2 percent of total CRO outsourcing in 2016 and will continue to be a high-revenue segment
• Pharmacovigilance, which has strong growth forecast until 2021
• eClinical trials to improve operational effectiveness in managing clinical trial data
• Virtual CRO models that can bring down costs, and functional service provider (FSP) models that address skilled manpower shortages
• Focus on booming therapeutic segments such as research for oncology, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), and central nervous system (CNS) disorders

"The volume of outsourcing to emerging markets is expected to increase significantly, even as North America retains a large portion of the high-value business," added Kumar. "While lower-cost locations present lesser margins in the short term, this will be offset by the increased volume share. Expanding capacity and scale will help CROs improve their margins in the near future."

Key CRO players across regions include QuintilesIMS, INC Research, Parexel International, Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD), Charles River Laboratories, inVentiv Health, PRA Health Sciences, ICON plc, Eurofins Scientific, and Amatsigroup.

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Global CRO Market, Forecast to 2021
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