Flow-Cytometry Market Poised To Speed Up, Not Slow Down

The market offers a wide range of excitation wavelengths, equally wide-ranging accurate and sensitive detectors, plus easy-to-use features ranging from validated assays and reagents to simple operation and analysis.

Flow cytometry’s informative potential has been underestimated for many years because of a lack of adequate instruments, automation, reagents, and know-how to approach, integrate, and also substitute other techniques giving single information per assay. In the last decade, flow cytometers have become capable of performing high-throughput screening and high content analysis, evaluating tens of different samples’ features in a single run up to 1536 formats on multiple cell populations. The introduction of imaging flow cytometry has filled the gap between flow cytometry and conventional high content imaging screening, putting flow cytometry at the center of many laboratories, which can now cover with a single instrument the vast majority of needs. The flow cytometry community is a multidisciplinary and diversified group with many different interests and fields of action. These characteristics have prompted the evolution of the techniques, applications, and instruments that allow the use of complex, sophisticated, and standardized and reliable flow cytometric assays.

The world of flow cytometry is now rapidly evolving. During the past few years, there have been significant changes regarding the assays with revived clinical applications, more elegant fluorochrome development, and the size and sensitivity of instruments. There have also been many developments in reagents, instruments, and applications. Polymer chemistry has developed several fluorochromes. For instance, a new fluorochrome strategy constructs large organic molecules into a cage bound by platinum molecules. Specific molecular assembly strategies tune the resonance frequency and fluorescence emission of the cage. Unlike most fluorochromes used today, these structures do not photobleach. The development of more sensitive fluorescence detectors has made smaller instrument footprints possible. This change has been occurring through the developmental history of flow cytometry instrumentation. There are clinical flow cytometry models that have the footprint of a standard laser printer. In the clinical laboratory, these smaller instruments usually have fewer lasers and fluorescence detectors.

Global market
The global flow cytometry market will likely rise at a healthy CAGR of 11 percent from 2018–2025, predicts Transparency Market Research. Rising at this pace, the market’s estimated valuation would reach USD 8100 million by 2025. The segment of flow cytometry instruments accounts for a leading market share and in the near future too is expected to hold on to it owing the usage of advanced models for target-based drug discovery. Advancements in the technology such as, the use of more robust photodetectors and new laser emitters, the use of LED lamps as emitter, and changes in analytical capacity in flow cytometry are expected to favor growth of the flow cytometry market. One difficulty staring at the market, on the other hand, is the emergence and soaring popularity of substitutes such as image and scanning cytometers. Limited awareness about the product is also having a negative impact.

Ongoing improvements
Despite half a century of development, there is no sign of flow-cytometry platforms slowing down in innovations. In September 2017, Beckman Coulter revealed some of the advances underway when it released the CytoFLEX LX, which covers a wide range of excitation wavelengths, from the near ultraviolet (375 nm) to infrared (808 nm). For collecting information, it uses avalanche photodiode detectors that provide high and stable quantum efficiency from 400 to 1100 nm. Despite providing so much selection, this platform just sits on a benchtop—not taking up a lot of room in a lab. And scientists get a range of options in selecting the right platform, and then quickly using it. Plus, putting flow cytometry on a benchtop can be done with various platforms. For example, the NovoCyte Quanteon (launched in May 2018 by ACEA Biosciences) sits on a bench, but small size does not mean low power. The NovoCyte Quanteon employs a series of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM), which have superb detection sensitivity. This high-performance instrument is capable of detecting up to 27 parameters with enhanced resolution and walk-away automation capabilities.

Other manufacturers are also providing flow-cytometry platforms with broad capabilities. As an example, the 2100 Bioanalyzer from Agilent can be used with DNA, RNA, or proteins to measure size and quantify and determine purity of a sample. In most flow-cytometry experiments, scientists use one or more fluorophores to label cells or targets. That is easy enough with one fluorophore, but not so easy with a few. So, Thermo Fisher Scientific created its fluorescence SpectraViewer. With this online tool, scientists can test the compatibility of combining specific fluorophores. That information can be used in designing an experiment, rather than finding out afterward that the fluorophore signals overlapped too much for accurate measurements or detection.

These examples already give some idea of what the market currently offers, and—more important—what buyers should expect. That can include a wide range of excitation wavelengths, equally wide-ranging detectors that are accurate and sensitive, plus ease-of-use features that range from validated assays and reagents to simple operation and analysis.

Adding options
One option that some buyers want with flow cytometry is imaging, which is like combining the capabilities of traditional flow cytometry with a microscope. One of the main advantages of adding imaging is the resulting increase in data. Instead of just counting, sorting, or measuring cells, scientists can look at them. That opens the door for many more analytical options. By virtue of high information content in images, imaging flow cytometry enables to perform more multiparametric analysis of heterogeneous cell populations than conventional non-imaging flow cytometry.

That is not the only technology that manufacturers are combining with flow cytometry. Where automation really matters, manufacturers have put together a collection of platforms to create an advanced workflow. The most important option in flow cytometers is the expanding selection that scientists can consider. In April 2018, for instance, MilliporeSigma unveiled its CellStream flow cytometry system, which uses a camera for detection. It can use as many as seven lasers to analyze cells and submicron particles.

Road ahead
So, even at 50 years old, the flow-cytometry market seems poised to speed up, not slow down. It is not just the improvements in excitation and detection options that matter, but also the improvements in add-on features, such as imaging and automation. As the ability to collect larger volumes and different types of data increases, flow cytometers will give more options for exploring big data and the correlations between it. As a result, the bioinformatics side must keep pace with the hardware advances, because there is no slowing in today’s flowing—not when it comes to analyzing cells and particles sweeping by advanced detectors.

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