Market Definition

Performed by CureTip

1. Overall Market
The total number of cancer patients grows every year. Approximate numbers
of new cases and mortality for 2012 worldwide are shown on fig. 1. For diagnosis
of some types of cancer clinicians perform DNA tests, which become a rapidly
growing market in last few years. It was made by a breakthrough in sequencing
technologies in last 10 years, made DNA analysis became cheaper.
In 2012, DNA test was performed for ~0.7M patients with new cancer cases
worldwide. It results in about $3.6B market size, with growth of 4-7% annually.
This is a very broad area that includes different types of cancer (such as lung,
breast, GI cancers, leukemia and etc.), which require different approaches in
treatment.

Fig. 1. Cases and mortality in different types of cancer in 2012. (Cyan - Males,
Magenta - Females)
2. Market Trends

With the cost of decoding of individuals genome expected to fall in the next
2-3 years to $1000 from its current price range of $10,000-$25,000, the market for
genome decoding in developed countries will explode. This will lead to a greater
understanding of disease and the development of new therapies. DNA tests will,
therefore, become more general and common.
Increase in life expectancy of population (plus 1 year every 7 years) leads to
the higher number of chronic, expensive-to-treat diseases, straining health-care
systems. In fact, with every 10 years of aging, probability of cancer grows twice.
This, with factor of growing population, causes cancer cases rise by 2.5 % annually
only in USA .
At the same time, new technology rapidly reduces cost per DNA genome
tests (from $10M in 2007 to $8K in 2012). That allows us to expect stable and fast
spreading of this method as a common test for oncology. Since our product
depends only on number of times DNA tests are used, it will ensure stable
technology base and growing basement market.
About 75% of all money are spent on vaccines and other means of
preventing or reducing the incidence and severity of serious diseases (e.g. cancers)
and chronic conditions (e.g. obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes). Smoking is
only slowly diminishing and a disappointing number of people are getting
colonoscopies.
Thats why based on these trends and the overall healthcare market growing
by 6% every year, in both short and long term statistics, we can conclude that
market of DNA tests will continue stable growth.
3. Market Segmentation
The first possible segmentation of cancer market is simply by types of
cancer (as you can see from fig. 1, on which different types of cancer are
presented). Besides, we can also consider patients of different age intervals and
2

sex.
Also market can be divided by geography: USA (about third of all tests
(~0.25M) were performed in USA with annual cost of $1.2B), Europe, Russia,
Rest of the world (fig. 3). USA market can also be divided by states, as some of
them possess more technological resources, like MA (38k patients, 2.2% of all
cancer cases) and CA (170k patients, 10.5%), in contrast to AK (3k patients, 0.2%)
and MT (5.5k patients, 0.3%) (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Cases distribution by US States in 2010.

Fig. 3. Lung cancer rates

around the world.

As our approach is based on mutation information we also need to segment
all cancer market by how do clinics perform DNA test: they can do nothing (dont
perform DNA test), they can hire companies, which will perform DNA test for
them, or perform DNA test in their own lab.
4. Beachhead market
We will concentrate on lung cancer in MA (USA) as in this case 70% of all
patients (7k in MA) pass through DNA sequence analysis. Cancer centers usually
provide this test by themselves and use this information to make further decisions
based on statistics and literature on common mutations. Therefore, the market of
lung cancer has all necessities for our technology resources. Annual amount of
DNA tests in MA for the case of lung cancer is 7k; average cost of DNA test is

~$5k. That gives us initial total addressable market of $35M.

We can extend our product distribution to other states of US (to the total
230k patients among US). After extending the product among US total annual
amount of DNA tests of lung cancer involved will be ~160k with total addressable
market of $0.8B. Later we can grow to Western Europe market of lung cancer as
there is also developed infrastructure for performing DNA tests. We can also shift
to other types of cancer, such as kidney cancer and breast cancer that are also good
targets for our technology.
5. Persona
Our persona is Aymen Benz, a 37 years old clinician in Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute, specialist in lung cancer. His annual income is $240K. He has a wife (33
years old) and a boy (5 years old). He works from 7 am to 4 pm. He values his time
and doesnt like to stay at work for late. After work he goes to a dinner-meeting
with his area partners or familiar physicians. As the dinner ends, he goes home to
his family and spend rest of the day with them. He doesnt watch TV. His hobby is
mountain skiing.
Aymen is smart and responsible person, open to new ideas and is fascinated
about scientific discoveries in field of cancer and lung cancer in particular. He
searches for and reads all articles related to cancer, and is interested in new
methods and new targets of cancer therapy. Besides, he is very responsible for
every individual case (every individual patient), uses all existing data to find the
best approach to cure every patient and believes that every cancer case can be
treated if one can find appropriate target and appropriate drug for this target.
Aymen thinks that his global mission in this life is to save other lives.