Overview
Immunoassays are commonly used laboratory tests used to identify and quantify proteins. With a range of applications in diagnosis of cancer, immunology and disease research, immunoassays are widely used by scientists in academia and industry. As life science suppliers continue improving products and services in the immunoassays market, immunoassays represent a key growth area in the life sciences industry.

In order to dive more deeply into the characteristics and dynamics of the market for Immunoassays, Percepta has introduced the Quantitative Immunoassay Dashboard™, designed to take a snapshot of the current market landscape with the future goal of repeating and publishing the study to give Dashboard readers the ongoing story of how the market is adapting to new products, new competitors and sales and marketing strategies.

The Quantitative Immunoassay Dashboard™ was developed from responses to a 25-question survey completed by 525 scientists predominantly located in North America and Europe. This Dashboard reveals key market indicators for the Immunoassay market as a whole as well as for the following methods representing market sub-segments:

• Standard Colorimetric or Chemiluminescent ELISA
• Fluorescent ELISA
• Electrochemiluminescence Immunoassays
• Bead-based Immunoassays

This report is focused on Immunoassays used in life science research.

Survey Methodology
In February 2011, Percepta fielded the Quantitative Immunoassay Survey to a subset of the company’s panel of life scientists. Individuals were invited by e-mail blast to click through to a webpage at bioanalytix.com where the survey was hosted.  Invitations were delivered on February 17, 2011 and results collected through March 3, 2011.  A total of 525 scientists completed the survey. Results based on the aggregate of collected responses are revealed in this Immunoassay Dashboard.

Respondent Demographics
Respondents from the academic, government and commercial market segments are well represented, with 30.1% of respondents employed in an industry setting and 69.7% of respondents employed in academic setting. 74.8% of respondents are from North America, while 24.2% reside in Europe.

Junior (Lab Tech, Grad Students), mid level (Post-Doc, Lab Manager) and senior (Professor/PI, Group Leader) scientists are well represented in the data set, with the most cited job titles being Scientist/Senior Scientist (26.1% of respondents) and Professor / Principal Investigator (17.1%).

A wide variety of scientific areas of specialization is also evident, led by Molecular Biology (named by 37.0% of respondents as their primary or secondary area of expertise) and Cell Biology (named by 26.3% of respondents).  Immunology (25.5%), Biochemistry (19.8%) and Microbiology/Infectious Disease/Virology (16.0%) are the only other applications named by more than 15% of respondents.

Small (1-5 scientists), medium (6-20 scientists) and large (>20 scientists) laboratories are well represented: 35.6% of respondents work in labs where 1 to 5 people perform experiments; 49.2% in labs with 6 to 20 experimenters, and the remaining 15.2% in labs with greater than 20 bench scientists.

40.6% of respondents indicated that 1 to 3 people in their laboratories perform immunoassay experiments at least a few times each year. An additional 21.9% of survey participants revealed that 4 or 5 individuals perform immunoassay experiments in their labs at least a few times each year. Only 37.5% of respondents work in labs where greater than 10 people perform immunoassay experiments at least a few times each year.