Market impact of Thermo Fisher biotech entry

WHAT will Thermo Fisher Scientific and Life Technologies $14-billion merger hold for the top 10 suppliers of synthetic biology technology and DNA sequencing landscape? The lab equipment company bought Life Technologies, one of the top ten suppliers of synthetic biology technology, for $13.6 billion in cash and $2.2 billion in debt.

In a recent Forbes story, Matthew Herper reports "As a result of all of this and new technologies, DNA sequencing has gotten cheaper with incredible speed. In 2007, it cost $1 million to create a human genome. Now some insurers have reimbursed doctors about $20,000 for sequencing all of a patient's DNA."

The recent merger means changes in the landscape for the rest of the nine leading suppliers of synthetic biology technology – DNA2.0, Origene, Synthetic Genomics, DuPont, Pfizer, Novozymes, Amrys Biotechnologies, Scarab Genomics, and British Petroleum – profiled in BCC Research's recently published report. The document examines these top companies in the field and discusses their positions in these complex patterns of supply and demand, as well as their investments and alliances.

Intense research and development continues to be both privately and publically funded, but the work has emphatically moved out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. Major corporations are putting new intellectual properties to work in new factories in the U.S. and abroad.

The players on this new field include new companies that come directly out of university research riding large holdings of intellectual property and established multinational giants that have the networks necessary to distribute and market the new materials.

Between these two ends of the spectrum, companies are emerging that can intermediately supply the substances and services that bridge the gaps. The result is intricate patterns of interconnectNike EPIC React Flyknit