Recently a trend for business dropping in the sector was highlighted by tissue specialist Asterand , whose share prices dropped by more than half.
Daniel Stewart analyst Alexandre attributes the changing nature of the business in large part to a split in the industry.
He told Outsourcing-Pharma that there is a low demand for simpler and easy to produce commodity samples.
Whereas for high spec samples – often difficult and even impossible to supply – the demand from contract research organisations (CROs) focusing their R&D efforts on complex and rare diseases has never been higher.
He said: “Requests for high spec tissues are getting increasingly complex and more diffuclt to supply.
“For example, in terms of cancer research, requests for tissue that is tissue naïve are coming in.
“What that means is tissue that comes from patients who haven’t been treated, and that obviously is very difficult to find.
“That’s just one example of the many reasons it is difficult for suppliers to meet demand.”