Asia-Pacific Genetic Testing Market Trends

Prenatal testing is used to detect the changes in a fetus's genes or chromosomes before birth. Prenatal testing is conducted during pregnancy because if there is a risk that the baby may have a genetic disorder, it can be detected early on. There is a slight increase in the number of newborns being diagnosed with genetic defects, and this is causing expectant mothers to opt for prenatal testing early on, in order to diagnose and cure any such defect. As China has a large population with a large number of new births each year, Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (NIPT) has been implemented in China since 2010. Strict registration is required to ensure the quality of NIPT, additional certification can help a manufacturer of a NIPT test to compile clinical data and to improve innovation, and academic societies can provide committee opinions that are suited to the current situation in China. These efforts are thus found to improve the regulations governing NIPT research in China. With these improvements, NIPT may offer promise, in terms of the early detection of rare diseases in the coming future.

The increasing prevalence of genetic abnormalities, the rise of DISC (Double Income, Single Child) families, the rapid growth of the In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) techniques, and increasing awareness regarding non-invasive prenatal screening among young Indian couples, are also the main driving parameters of the non-invasive prenatal testing market in India. However, high costs in a developing country like India prevents the large-scale adoption of prenatal testing. Hence, being a novel segment to enter the Indian sector, NIPT currently faces a few major challenges that limit its growth to a few regions of India. In the coming years, Japan is likely to have more medical institutions, and soon it is expected to be allowed to conduct blood-based prenatal screenings instead of amniotic fluid tests to detect the chromosomal abnormalities. NIPT is also used to detect abnormal number of chromosomes in the fetus using massive parallel sequencing of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from maternal blood, and is gaining rapid acceptance in obstetrics as it is used to detect maternal cancer. Increase in the number of cancer cases is expected to boost market growth.