Are you an executive at a stem cell company that offers induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research products? Or, are you an investor in a company of this type? If so, have you wondered how much market competition exists for your products or services? Have you been curious as to the rate at which this competition is increasing? By focusing on these key points of understanding, you’ll be able to assess the technical attributes that matter, including what opportunities exist for expanding your product line and your customer reach.
iPSC research products have existed since 2006, the year in which Shinya Yamanaka’s team at Kyoto University first produced iPSCs from mouse cells. The discovery was a vital advancement in stem cell research, as it allows researchers to obtain pluripotent stem cells without the difficult legal, technical and ethical controversies that have long surrounded deriving cells from embryos. Yamanaka and his team reprogrammed adult mouse fibroblasts into iPSCs by introducing four reprogramming factors: Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4. Subsequent work by James Thomson and colleagues replicated Yamanaka’s success with human cells and revealed additional factors, Nanog and Lin28, which facilitate the reprogramming process.
Rate of Entrants into the iPSC Research Products Marketplace
By the end of 2006, the year that iPSCs were discovered, there were only two companies selling iPSC products. This number increased to seven by 2007 and then began increasing more substantially.
Therefore, a year-over-year breakdown is shown below to indicate the rate of new entrants into the iPSC research products marketplace and current levels of market competition. For this analysis, a manual search for iPSC product companies has been conducted every year since 2006.
To see a complete list of the companies selling iPSC research products, view our post “Must-Know Competitors within the iPSC Research Products Marketplace.”
Number of Companies Offering iPSC Research Products, by Year
| Year | # of Companies | Percent Change Over Previous Year |
| 2006 | 2 | N/A |
| 2007 | 7 | 250% |
| 2008 | 13 | 86% |
| 2009 | 22 | 69% |
| 2010 | 24 | 9% |
| 2011 | 26 | 8% |
| 2012 | 28 | 8% |
| 2013 | 31 | 11% |
| 2014 | 40 | 29% |
| 2015 | 40 | 0% |
To learn more about opportunities for commercializing iPSC research products, click here to view the “Compete 2015-16 Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) Industry Report.”
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