According to a recent survey of genomic researchers, overall microarray spending will be flat in 2013 as compared to 2012, as an increase in spending on structural variation arrays will be offset by a drop in expression arrays.
Around 52 percent of respondents to a quarterly genomics survey conducted by GenomeWeb and investment bank Mizuho Securities USA said that they currently use or plan to use microarrays in their research. The survey, which collected responses from 99 GenomeWeb readers in late December, found that respondents on average expect their array spending to be flat over the next two years, with spending on structural arrays up by nearly 3 percent and spending on gene expression arrays down by a nearly equal amount.
Respondents were most likely to purchase Illumina arrays over the next 12 months, though Affymetrix saw an increase in demand as compared to the year-ago genomics survey.
Looking forward, respondents said that cytogenetics/diagnostics would be the most relevant array application over the next two years, though expression still ranked well. Interest in exome chips declined as compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, perhaps reflecting the growing use of sequencing for this application or the fact that Illumina and Affymetrix's exome arrays had become available at an early-access price around the same time as when the earlier survey was conducted (BAN 10/18/2011).
The 26-question survey, designed to assess general trends in the genomics R&D sector, was e-mailed to a subset of GenomeWeb readers comprising researchers in academic organizations, hospital or reference labs, and biopharmaceutical firms. Around 55 percent of the 99 respondents work in a government or academic setting and approximately 71 percent receive government research funding.