What are Main Factors Responsible for Growing Demand for Mass Spectrometry?

“The increasing focus on food safety is a key factor fuelling the demand for mass spectrometry across the world”. As per many reports and surveys conducted by healthcare and food and beverage companies, chemicals, pathogens, and toxins present in the food items are majorly responsible for many diseases around the world. A major factor responsible for the contamination of food items is the quality of water used in their processing. Thus, with the growing public awareness regarding food safety, the requirement of mass spectrometry is rapidly rising across the world.

The other important factor propelling the demand for mass spectrometry is the surging healthcare expenditure in several countries around the world. The governments of many countries are increasingly making huge investments for improving the healthcare facilities and infrastructure and for providing enhanced healthcare services to the citizens. Furthermore, the increasing healthcare spending is causing the development of advanced treatment procedures and drugs, which is, in turn, boosting the adoption of mass spectrometry in various healthcare applications.

In simpler terms, mass spectrometry is a method of measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. This technique is used in a plethora of applications in the life sciences sector such as the identification of protein from the mass of peptide fragment, enzyme reaction monitoring, protein digestion, chemical modifications, forensic analysis, detection of disease biomarkers, ascertaining the protein structure, and the absolute or relative quantification of the proteins present in a sample.

Apart from the above-mentioned factors, the rapid technological developments in mass spectrometry systems and the ballooning focus of pharmaceutical organizations on attaining good distribution practice (GDP) and good manufacturing practice (GMP) certifications is also propelling the demand for mass spectrometry all over the world. Due to these factors, “the global mass spectrometry market attained a revenue of $4,948.3 million in 2015”. Furthermore, the market is predicted to demonstrate a CAGR of 8.1% from 2016 to 2022, as per the forecasts of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India.

It is of crucial importance that the food industry pays attention to the quality and safety of food products. The water that is utilized in the preparation of different products can be contaminated, thereby leading to production of unhealthy food items. It has been observed that the presence of chemicals, toxins, and pathogens in food products is rising and becoming a primary healthcare concern all around the world. Attributed to these factors, the emphasis on food safety is increasing, and as the identification of microorganisms in food is important for improving its quality, the utilization of mass spectrometry in the food industry is growing swiftly.

The analytical method that is utilized for identifying various compounds on the basis of atomic sample constitution of molecules and their charge state is referred to as mass spectrometry. The method allows analysis of an unknown sample despite the lack of any prior knowledge of its composition. Mass spectrometry is utilized for measuring molar mass, sample purity, or molecular structure; each of these needing a different experimental approach. It is because of these factors, that the global mass spectrometry market is expected to register substantial growth in the years to come.

Academic and research institutes, life sciences and biotechnology sectors, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals are the main categories present under the end user segmentation of the mass spectrometry market. Out of these, “the highest usage of mass spectrometry is predicted to be observed in the pharamaceutical organizations in the future years”, owing to which, the pharmaceuticals category will register the highest growth in the market in future. There are mainly two types of mass spectrometry platforms used in these settings— single and hybrid. Between the two, “the utilization of the hybrid platforms would be higher in the coming years”.

Thus, it can be said with surety that the demand for mass spectrometry will skyrocket throughout the world in the upcoming years, on account of the rising emphasis on food hygiene and safety, increasing public awareness regarding food safety, growing utilization of this method in various life sciences and healthcare applications, and surging healthcare expenditure in many countries around the world.