May 2024 | Report Format: Electronic (PDF)
Automated Liquid Handling Technologies Market Growth & Trends
The global automated liquid handling technologies market size was estimated at USD 4.20 billion in 2030 and is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5% from 2024 to 2030. Automated liquid handling technology has changed wet lab research handling by allowing substantial restructuring of the manufacturing and research facilities of the pharma and biotech companies. There is increasing acceptance of liquid handling robots to restore the conventionally reserved wet lab bench work areas. This factor is expected to drive the market.
The key aspects of maintaining the overall productivity of these companies are the efficient and accurate handling of the liquid samples. This makes biopharma companies and research laboratories rely greatly on robotics and automation. Usage of preprogrammed and customizable procedures reduces the need for management as it allows scientists to invest additional time in the analysis of data. Moreover, the buyers have a choice to select from various liquid handling technologies such as positive displacement, air displacement dispensing, acoustic, and piezoelectric. This choice to pick from a variety of automated liquid handlers impacts the power of the buyer. Significant market players are involved in manufacturing low-volume liquid handling systems owing to the increasing adoption of microplates and microfluidics in lab processing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented the industry growth significantly as the demand for ALHsystem has increased with an upsurge in the need to process the specimens quicker in the laboratory for COVID-19 virus research with the examination of virus genetic makeup and study of COVID-19 virus genetic mutations. Thus, the pandemic has positively impacted the market. Moreover, new product launches accelerated the growth of the market during the pandemic. For instance, in April 2022, Novacyt introduced a novel ALH system to meet the increasing requirement for no manual pipetting in COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction testing. Furthermore, in March 2020, Hamilton Company announced numerous automation-related initiatives to help healthcare researchers and workers during the coronavirus pandemic. The company launched two innovative automated assay-ready workstations, established on the company’s liquid handling workstation (Microlab STARlet), which enables rapid, research-based testing of SARS-CoV-2 and high-throughput diagnostic.
In addition, effective miniaturization of the assay platforms reduces workflow expenditure, thereby decreasing the usage of expensive reagents. Miniaturized platforms are developed for highly précised liquid handling for different processes such as plate washing, bulk dispensing, and liquid transfer. Small benchtop workstations are marketed by Hamilton Company, PerkinElmer, Beckman Coulter, and LABCYTE INC.
Demand for effective miniaturization is another major factor driving the market. The cost of testing is a main worldwide issue. Countries want to increase the speed of testing but are barred by cost and testing capacity, particularly in the developing regions. Miniaturization of the test protocol has achieved a huge reduction in cost while sustaining reliability and throughput. Automated liquid handling provides scientists with a new layer of opportunity, which cannot be accomplished by manual pipetting alone. Additionally, miniaturization is seen as a keystone in advancing biological research. In the last 20 years, technology has inclined to miniaturization to boost the throughput (microarray and DNA/protein on chip technology) and manufacture accurate assays to characterize molecules and cells in drug discovery and research.
ALH systems are space-consuming, complicated, and expensive and leave many scientists unable or unwilling to maximize the capability of their work. All these issues restrain the growth of the market. However, to overcome these problems, researchers from the Vanderbilt Center for Bone Biology developed OTTO. This open-source automated liquid handler is low-priced as compared to other available products in the market. As these researchers reported, this platform can be fabricated at the cost of $1,500 using off-the-shelf and 3D-printable parts as a substitute for commercial devices.
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Automated Liquid Handling Technologies Market Report
Automated Liquid Handling Technologies Market Report Highlights
- By product, the automated liquid handling workstations segment held the largest share in 2022. The growing competition among the pharmaceutical companies and their pursuit of new drugs to treat diseases effectively drive the adoption of automated workstations
- Multipurpose workstations are projected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period due to their rapid adoption by the pharma and biopharma CROs. These workstations enable microplate washing, multichannel pipetting, and bulk reagent dispensing within a single unit
- By application, the drug discovery and ADME-Tox research segment dominated the market in 2022. Various applications in drug discovery and ADME Tox include stepwise serial dilution over a wide concentration range, selection and transfer of compounds for the retest, and confirmatory and further analysis
- Cancer and genomic research is expected to witness the fastest growth during the forecast period owing to the ability of these workstations to handle multiple samples of microliter to picoliter volume
- Workflow complexity and the need for the fastest target screening resulted in the increase in the installation of automated workstations by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
- North America dominated the market in 2022 owing to the rapid adoption of advanced platforms, the high cost of hiring skilled professionals, and the presence of key players
- Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period owing to the rapid progress of the pharma and biopharmaceutical companies in the region
- High economic developments in APAC countries are anticipated to increase investments in the life science, medicine, and pharmaceutical sectors. Progress in these sectors is expected to fuel the demand for automated workstations, especially those based on microfluidics
