By Monica Savaglia Written May 11, 2021 |
| Before last year, companies like Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), AstraZeneca (NASDAQ: AZN), and BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) were most likely unknown to you. They probably weren’t even on your radar unless you’re a person who keeps up with biotech companies, and even still, there are a lot of biotech companies so it’s hard to keep up with all of them and what they’re working on. If it wasn’t for the coronavirus pandemic, I doubt that Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and BioNTech would have become such household names. These companies stepped up in a time of need to develop and manufacture vaccines for COVID-19. It was their time to shine and they took advantage of the opportunity to bring awareness to their company and what they specialize in.According to a recent report from Acumen Research and Consulting (a global provider of market research studies), the global biotechnology market is expected to grow at a CAGR of about 15.5% from 2020–2027 and reach a market value of over $850.5 billion by 2027. That forecast growth is set to be massive and it’s going to bring many opportunities not only to those biotech companies but also to investors who were well-informed about what these biotech companies are working on and how their research and development are progressing. |
That’s the thing about biotech companies — they can spend a lot of time researching and developing their pipelines of potential treatments, and waiting for news about when to expect a candidate to come to market can lead a lot of investors to forget about a company and its potentially groundbreaking treatment. It’s a waiting game, but one that could easily bring fortunes to investors who are well-informed and who do know what to expect in the years to come.
We know that the expectations for the global biotech market in the next seven years are growing massively and that its valuation is set to reach over $850 billion by 2027. Then there’s a new report from the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC) that indicates that biotechnology could potentially account for about 20% of the global economy by 2040, with agriculture and manufacturing as some of its main drivers and with healthcare applications expanding.
You most likely associate biotech with health care and finding treatments for diseases or viruses. However, the market and its innovations are vast. The NIC’s report states that innovations in biotechnology could allow societies to decrease disease, hunger, and petrochemical dependence by 2040, while also transforming how society interacts with the environment and each other. This would be an ideal future — one in which people would be healthy and could begin to reverse the damages on the environment caused by the production and overconsumption of certain products.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a lot of realizations in regard to health, how people live, the economy, and politics, just to name a few. People jave had a lot of time to reflect on what works and what hasn’t been working. And some of those things that haven’t been working need to be readjusted to be beneficial to people and society. The biotechnology market and its recent innovations could be just the start of new products and a newer way of producing those products to better suit our lives and future.
With the opportunity to advance biotechnology applications like genetically modified (GM) organisms and biological processes, there’s a good chance that materials, medicines, agriculture, and food production will be transformed as well, which could lead to a variety of cheaper, more nutritious foods that have a lower environmental impact. While there is still a lot to figure out when it comes to anything that’s genetically modified, if we can use the technology in the way that most people hope, it could open up the world to a new way of living. And whatever company is behind that type of groundbreaking innovation will most likely benefit enormously.
