1. Chemical reagents
According to the different properties of reagents, scientific research reagents can be roughly divided into chemical reagents and biological reagents, among which chemical reagents are simple substances or compounds, including synthetic reagents, catalysts and organometallic reagents. Chemical reagents are fine chemical products purified on the basis of industrial-grade chemicals. There are many ways to classify chemical reagents, and the common classification standards are as follows:
Classification by use: can be divided into general chemical reagents, chemical reagents for PCB and ultra-clean and high-purity reagents;
Classified by purity: experimental purity ≥90%, chemical purity ≥99.5%, analytical purity ≥99.7%, excellent grade ≥99.8%, high-purity reagent ≥99.99%, benchmark reagent ≥99.99, the corresponding process complexity of different purities is also It will be different. The higher the purity, the more complex and difficult the process is required.
Chemical reagents can be divided into high-end reagents (special reagents) and general reagents according to the difficulty of manufacture and use.
High-end reagents refer to scientific research reagents used in analysis and testing, life sciences, chemical synthesis, materials science, electronic chemistry, etc. Synthetic blocks, material monomers, biomarkers, high-purity metals, special catalysts, standard reference substances, chromatography reagents, biological reagents, etc., mainly used in biomedicine, new materials, new energy, fine chemicals, food daily chemicals and other fields .
General reagents refer to commonly used chemicals used in chemical experiments, analytical tests, research experiments, teaching experiments and chemical formulations. Reagents, conventional solvents, inorganic compounds, etc., are conventional basic scientific research reagents in various application fields.
Sigma-Aldrich, Thermo Fisher, Merck, and AxisPharm in the United States occupy more than 80% of the market share.
The chemical reagents were strengthened, and the output growth rate picked up. As a typical fine chemical industry, chemical reagents are an important part of the chemical industry. With the progress of scientific research, chemical reagents have also developed by leaps and bounds, and their output value has grown rapidly.
2. Biological reagents
Biological reagents refer to biological materials or organic compounds used in life science research, which are an indispensable part of basic research to transformation of achievements.
The global market of biological reagents is RMB 100 billion yuan. The global bioresearch reagent market reached US$12.8 billion in 2015, and grew at a compound annual growth rate of 8.1% to US$17.5 billion in 2019. It is estimated that by 2024, the global bioresearch reagent market will reach US$24.6 billion. The compound growth rate in 2024 is 7.1%.
Biological scientific research reagent products can be divided into three categories: 1. Protein (type of reagents required in protein macromolecular experiments); 2. Nucleic acid (also known as molecular, including customized synthetic nucleic acids and cloning vectors and other molecular experiments) 3. Cells (covering reagents required for cell experiments such as transfection reagents and culture medium).
Biological reagent industry chain:
Upstream supply chain: suppliers of biological, chemical raw materials, production equipment, packaging materials and consumables;
Biological reagent manufacturers: develop a wide variety of biological reagents using the above-mentioned raw materials;
Downstream customer groups: including scientific research institutions, high-throughput sequencing service companies, in vitro diagnostic reagent manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and CRO companies, etc.
Due to the higher requirements for products and services of biological research reagents, the difficulty will also be greater, resulting in extremely high barriers to entry.
Molecular biological reagents mainly refer to the types of reagents required for experiments on nucleic acids and small molecules. Methodology is related methods and technologies in molecular biology, mainly composed of various enzymes, antibodies and buffers composed of organic compounds, inorganic compounds, ultrapure water, etc. The difference in the composition of different biological reagent products is mainly reflected in the enzyme Types, dosages and formulations of buffers, etc.
Protein biological research reagents mainly refer to the types of reagents required in protein macromolecular experiments. Common protein products include recombinant proteins and antibodies. In terms of the overall market size, the antibody market size is 2.7 billion yuan, accounting for 66%, while the recombinant protein market is 900 million yuan, accounting for 22%. Antibody and recombinant protein products together account for 88% of the protein reagent market.
Cell-based products mainly refer to the types of reagents used in experiments conducted around in vitro cells, mainly covering:
Transfection reagent: The so-called transfection is the process of introducing nucleic acid into eukaryotic cells. Transfection reagents are designed to efficiently and rapidly introduce nucleic acids into common as well as difficult-to-transfect cell lines and for transient transfection in suspension cultured cells.
Cell culture medium: a nutrient matrix prepared by a combination of different nutrients for cell growth and reproduction.
3. Industry Outlook
The customer groups of high-prosperity biological scientific research reagents are mainly users of scientific research institutions and industrial users. The characteristics of users also vary:
The users of scientific research institutions include colleges and universities, various research institutes, etc., the demand for products is often more scattered, and the sensitivity to product prices is also lower. Industrial users include drug R&D companies, outsourced R&D institutions, etc. Individual industrial users often have greater demands and are more sensitive to product prices due to cost considerations.
The users of scientific research institutions include colleges and universities, various research institutes, etc. Under the background that the world pays more and more attention to basic scientific research, the scientific research funds obtained by scientific research users are relatively abundant, and the demand for biological scientific research reagents is also stable as a necessary condition for the production of academic achievements in basic life science research and basic medical research. increase.
The scientific research user market of biological reagents occupies a dominant position. In the global biological reagent market in 2019, the market size of scientific research users reached US$11.2 billion, accounting for about 63.8%; while the market for industrial users was about US$6.3 billion, accounting for about 36.2%.
As countries around the world pay more and more attention to basic research, more and more research funding is allocated. In recent years, the proportion of funds in the field of basic science, especially in the field of life science, has gradually increased in scientific research funds, which has promoted the rapid development of basic research and development in life sciences. The investment in research funding in the field of life sciences by countries around the world has also grown rapidly, from US$116.6 billion in 2015 to US$151.4 billion in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.7%.
Judging from the geographical distribution of global life science research funds, the United States invested about 72.9 billion US dollars in research funds in 2019, accounting for 48.2% of the total global research funds, followed by Europe, which accounted for about 22.1% of the overall research funds. %.
The transformation of achievements and the rise of small and medium-sized biotech companies are new features of the industry. In recent years, life science research has developed rapidly, especially in the subdivision fields such as immunity and genes, and research results have been transformed into “blockbuster” drugs. Impressive precedents of commercialization success have driven basic research into the commercialization stage faster, thereby driving the development of life science research. With the increasing difficulty in the development of new chemical drugs and the development of life science research, biological drugs have become the main driving factor for the growth of the pharmaceutical market, and many small and medium-sized biotechnology companies have also begun to get involved in the research and development of biological drugs. In order to discover more new mechanisms and new targets, these biotech companies also pay more attention to R&D investment.
