Pharmaceutical companies devote extensive resources to toxicity testing in order to screen out potentially harmful drug candidates before they enter clinical trials. Common toxicology procedures, such as rodent testing or in vitro assays with cultured cells, are effective for identifying many toxic compounds, but they provide imperfect data which compromises their predictive ability. Promising drug candidates may be eliminated needlessly from further study, or more seriously, potentially harmful compounds may stay in the pipeline because of misleading toxicity results. The emerging field of toxicogenomics promises to overcome these limitations by exploiting advanced techniques for gene expression profiling to assess toxicity with much greater levels of precision. Rather than focusing on a finite number of metabolic or cellular indicators, toxicogenomics looks at thousands of genes and catalogs changes in their expression patterns after exposure to toxic compounds. The effectiveness of this approach is based on several technological advances: the recent discoveries of many new target gene sequences, the development of microarray and amplification-based methods for mass gene expression analysis and the assembly of extensive databases cataloging toxin-induced gene expression profiles. The market implications of this research are especially significant for suppliers to the drug industry, which will save considerable time and money using toxicogenomics as a tool to screen for losing compounds far earlier in the drug discovery process. Other opportunities for life science suppliers can be expected to emerge in less familiar markets such as environmental health, chemicals, cosmetics and food additives. Designed to help life science suppliers capitalize on this burgeoning field, this report offers a detailed picture of the market for toxicogenomic-based products and services, including the rate at which new researchers are entering the field, attractive target markets and barriers to adoption. Based on a 38-question survey of over 300 life scientists involved in toxicogenomics, The Market for Toxicogenomics Products & Services provides a look at service providers, informatics products, microarrays and databases from the end-user's perspective. By understanding the actual experiences, preferences and expectations of these researchers, life science suppliers can better position themselves and appeal to the diverse needs of their target market. Report Highlights
The Market for Toxicogenomics Products & Services contains over 70 charts and/or tables and over 40 cross-tabulations for the 38 survey questions. Below is a glimpse of the key findings derived from just a few of the survey questions: • The most frequently used toxicology methods are cell-based assays, microarrays (DNA or protein), real-time quantitative RT-PCR and whole animal assays. (Question 3) • The majority of the respondents' toxicogenomics experiments are performed in their lab (47%) or at an institutional or departmental core facility (27%). (Question 8) • The most significant challenges that respondents experience when designing their toxicogenomics experiments are "generating reproducible results" (22%) and "obtaining enough samples for statistical relevance" (20%). (Question 21) • While 35% of the respondents who use DNA microarrays in their toxicogenomics research think that the number of DNA microarrays they hybridize or analyze will stay the same, another 46% believe it will increase. (Question 24) • For the DNA microarrays used in their toxicogenomics research, over 50% of the survey respondents use an Affymetrix GeneChip and 28% print them in their lab. (Question 28) • Overall, researchers are least satisfied with the literature search, script building and price of their data analysis software. (Question 32) (electronic copy also includes 1 print copy) | 
