According to a new report from Allied Market Research, the global biomarkers market for diagnostic applications such as risk assessment, molecular diagnostic, disease diagnosis, drug discovery and development, drug formulation, forensic and other such applications is set to reach about $30.6 billion in 2020, growing at CAGR of 16% from 2013 to 2020.

Disease diagnostic remains the key application segment expected to reach $6.1 billion in 2020. However, application of diagnostic biomarkers in forensics and molecular diagnostics is catching up significantly, with the latter expected to experience a growth rate of 17.6% during 2013 and 2020. With respect to geography, Asia Pacific is expected to have the highest CAGR at 20.3% from 2013 to 2020.

"Diagnostic biomarkers continue to address challenges such as early and accurate diagnosis of most of the fatal diseases. Increasing advancements with extended applications of diagnostic biomarkers are only going to increase its significance in the field of diagnostics," said Debbie Shields and Roshan Deshmukh, AMR analysts. "Diagnostic biomarker technology is expected to change the scenario of drug development and medical practice, as technologies are metamorphosing from traditional pathophysiology/epidemiology approach to biomarker studies such as genomics and proteomic.

Diagnostic biomarkers, though a great tool in molecular diagnostics, are facing challenges with respect to ethical and regulatory issues as these are related to the genomic pattern of an individual, which needs to be extremely confidential.