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The Environmental Testing Market

The unfolding crisis in East Palestine, Ohio, where a cargo train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in early February, is just the latest high-profile incident to evince the importance of environmental testing. The derailment and subsequent controlled burn of several train cars containing the carcinogenic chemical vinyl chloride, and the potential spill of other chemicals, prompted environmental and public health concerns in the surrounding community. Reports of thousands of dead fish in nearby waterways and residents experiencing headaches and rashes, among other incidents, emerged after the derailment.

In the weeks following the event, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has deployed equipment and personnel to conduct air, water, and soil sampling. The full scale of the impacts of the spill and burn will likely not be known for years, but in the meantime, the testing will help stakeholders gauge how contamination from the chemicals may harm the environment and the health of the community, and what countermeasures should be taken in response.

Among other factors, an expanding public awareness of environmental issues (in 2022 Gallup reported that 44% of Americans were concerned about the quality of the environment, with pollution of drinking water and waterways as their main topic of concern), and an increase in government oversight and regulations have helped boost demand for environmental testing. Survey data collected by TDA (available in an upcoming report on the environmental and food testing analytical market) confirms this increase in demand, with almost 60% of respondents, who represent a cross section of testing labs, expecting a future increase in workload. The overall market for environmental testing services and technologies is expected to reach a value of $3.2 billion in 2022 (up from $3.0 billion in 2021) and shows compound annual growth rates in the mid-single digits over the next five years, reinforced especially by demand from the North America and Asia Pacific regions.

Tightening regulations and government funding for environmental monitoring are expected to drive demand for environmental testing in the future. The EPA, which is responsible for carrying out environmental regulation in the US, is in a rebuilding phase after several years of staffing and funding cuts. Despite small gains since 2021, the agencyΓÇÖs workforce is still sagging, with a total staff numbering around 85% of what it was ten years ago, according to a report published earlier this year by E&E News.

In light of these setbacks and slowdowns, the EPA and a broader mission of environmental regulation have been a central focus of the Biden administration. Just in the last several months, the administration has instated or reinstated rules that limit nitrogen dioxide emissions from vehicles and mercury emissions from power plants, and is expected in the coming weeks to issue new guidelines regulating PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water. The agency’s yearly budget was set at $10.1 billion in the 2023 omnibus spending bill, about a 6% increase from the previous year, with a $71.6 million raise for enforcement and compliance efforts.

Several new federal funding bills include money for new environmental monitoring efforts that will prompt the need for increased testing. The $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in November 2021, included $55 billion earmarked to expand clean water access, $21 billion for Superfund and brownfield site cleanup, and $100 million for toxic pollution prevention grants, among other related provisions. And the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, provides $117.5 million for air pollution monitoring and $1.6 billion in grants for methane monitoring and mitigation.

Other factors will affect the environmental testing market in the US and beyond, including the long tail of the coronavirus pandemic. While community wastewater has long been tested for pathogens like cholera and the poliovirus, the method has proved valuable in detecting COVID-19 outbreaks. And in emerging geographic markets, the global demand for environmental testing will be driven by increasing industrialization, urbanization, and investment in infrastructure, with the Asia Pacific region expected to be the second fastest–growing market behind the US and North America.

IMF Projects Cratering Growth but Peaking Inflation in January World Economic Outlook Update

The global economy is not out of the proverbial woods just yet. But the record-high inflation that has plagued the world since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is hitting its peak, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports in its January 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update: Inflation Peaking amid Low Growth. Though growth is expected to dip in 2023 and the shocks felt from tightening monetary policy, slowdowns in China, and the effects of the Russian war in Ukraine continue to radiate through the economy, the IMF says the adverse risks laid out in its October 2022 Outlook have moderated.

Real GDP was stronger than expected in many economies during the third quarter of 2022 (though likely cooled off in the fourth quarter, the IMF says), including those in the United States, Europe, and emerging market and developing economies. These economies experienced strong private consumption and investment domestically, with households spending more on services and tapping into their savings to do so. According to the IMF, energy markets were quicker to adjust to the effects of the war in Ukraine than anticipated, another positive surprise.

Looking ahead, global inflation is projected to decrease from its peak in 2022 of 8.8% to hit 6.6% in 2023, thanks to tightening monetary policy in central banks across the world. By 2024, global inflation will fall to 4.3%, a figure that is still higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5%. Global economic growth has not begun to meaningfully recover just yet and is expected to drop from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.9% in 2023 (revised up 0.2 point from the October 2022 WEO), before rising back up to 3.1% in 2024.

The US economy has seen some encouraging signs in recent months, with 517,000 new jobs created and unemployment hitting 3.4% (a 50-year-low) in January of this year. On February 1, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by only 0.25 point, its smallest increase since March 2022. But the successive hikes are expected to hamper US growth, which the IMF projects will drop from 2% in 2022 to 1.4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024.

Growth in the euro area and the United Kingdom is in even worse shape, expected to hit 0.7% and -0.6% respectively in 2023. These forecasts are a 0.9 point downward revision of the October 2022 WEO’s predictions for the UK, but a 0.2 point upward revision of those for the EU, reflecting the effects of fast rate hikes enacted by the European Central Bank. Nonetheless, inflation in the UK and in several European countries remains at or above 10%.

China continues to drive the outlook in Asia. After nearly three years of rigid zero-COVID lockdowns, China relaxed the policy in November 2022, clearing the way for a swifter economic recovery. The IMF estimates China’s real GDP slowed to 3% in 2022 but will rise to 5.2% in 2023 before slowing to 4% in 2024. This rebound could be uneven or stalled by the virus, as immunity levels are still low among the population, and the healthcare system in certain areas may not have the capacity to respond to wide outbreaks.

Other downside risks still loom over a potential recovery, chief among them the potential that the war in Ukraine could escalate and geopolitical fragmentation could intensify as a result. Despite aggressive interest rate hikes enacted across economies, inflation could persist if food and energy prices rise due to the war in Ukraine, or if the labor market remains tight and wages grow.

As explored in TDA’s 2023 Instrument Industry Outlook Report, the global economic situation points to a positive but uneven outlook for the analytical instruments industry, which has maintained growth through the last few uncertain years. If inflation does respond to tightening monetary policy and prices go down accordingly towards the end of 2023, consumers will be more apt to make large purchases like appliances and vehicles. Along those same lines, laboratories will have more purchasing power to buy large instruments, but these outcomes could be squashed if inflation doesn’t budge. And instruments will continue to be needed to respond to the global energy crisis, including atomic spectroscopy technologies for testing of coal-derived pollutants (world coal consumption hit an all-time high in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency), and materials analysis and process analytical instrumentation products, as US and OPEC crude oil production is expected to increase in 2023.

R&D Receives $195 Billion in 2023 Federal Budget

After months of back-and-forth, the United States Congress agreed to a $1.7 trillion spending bill for Fiscal Year 2023 on December 20, 2022, with President Biden signing it into law on December 29. The omnibus bill funds the federal government through September 30, 2023, and provides $195.2 billion for R&D funding, about a 10.3% increase from FY 2022.

Most agencies conducting R&D received a substantial funding boost in the 2023 budget. The National Science Foundation (NSF) budget grew by 12% to $9.9 billion (the CHIPS and Science Act, passed last summer to fund semiconductor manufacturing and research in the US, calls for doubling the NSF budget over the next 5 years). Within that appropriation is $680 million earmarked for the NSF’s new directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIPS). Created last year, TIPS is focused on “use-inspired” R&D, for example, fast-tracking collaborations between research and industry to bring new technologies to market and bolstering research in geographic areas with little R&D infrastructure.

Responsible for furthering US innovation and industrial prowess, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also got a bump in appropriations in the omnibus bill. Its budget for 2023 will be $1.6 billion, up 32% from last year, with funding earmarked for creating new semiconductor manufacturing institutes as part of a technology innovation network program (also intended to meet goals set in the CHIPS Act).

The largest overall funder of US scientific research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), saw its total budget grow by 5.6%, or $2.5 billion, to $47.5 billion (much more than the $274 million increase requested by the Biden administration). Within the NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) got a 2.8% increase, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) saw a 3.8% boost, for total budgets of $7.1 billion and $6.6 billion, respectively.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a new agency created in March 2022 to focus on breakthrough medical research, was allocated $1.5 billion (up 50% from the $1 billion appropriated last year when it was founded). Residing under the umbrella of the NIH yet operationally independent of it, the agency does not yet have a physical location. The funding comes with the stipulation that the agency cannot be located on the grounds of the NIH, and selection and construction of ARPA-H’s permanent home is expected to come.

Congress also provided the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Science with more funding than originally proposed by the Biden administration. The agency, which is the largest source of physical science research funding in the US, received $8.1 billion (up 8.4% from 2022 and more than twice the 3.9% requested by the White House). The Science and Technology arm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is recovering after staffing shortages and funding rollbacks during the Trump administration, got $802.3 million in the budget (a 6.9% raise). Those appropriations include a 7.6% hike for Clear Air Act research and come after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in August 2022 allocated $190 million for air monitoring in communities located close to industrial production and other sources of pollution.

Overall, these windfalls for federal R&D will benefit the analytical instruments industry. The focus on semiconductor research and manufacturing laid out in last year’s CHIPS Act and fleshed out in 2023 appropriations for several agencies and institutes will support demand for microscopy and materials analysis technologies. Domestic manufacturing initiatives advanced by the Biden Administration, including CHIPS Act funding and programs administered by the TIPS directorate, will help strengthen demand from industrial end markets, and their focus on environmental monitoring will do the same for environmental testing. And though the flurry of pandemic-related research has slowed, NIH funding for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and other disease research will boost demand for life science instruments, microscopy, lab automation, and emerging next-generation proteomics technologies.

Next-Gen Proteomics: Multiplex Immunoassays, Affinity-Based Detection, and Single-Cell and Spatial Profiling

As demonstrated by the introduction of novel mass spectrometry (MS) methods that add further dimensions to traditional MS, many next generation proteomics approaches aren’t attempting to reinvent the wheel. Rather, these new technologies build off and expand upon existing ones, including a new class of multiplex immunoassays that improve on the sensitivity or multiplexing abilities of conventional immunoassays like ELISA.

A typical multiplex immunoassay workflow involves binding proteins in a sample with labeled microparticles or beads (magnetic or otherwise), applying fluorescence, and amplifying the product in microwells or suspension bead arrays for imaging and digital detection. Most of the assays can detect up to ten targets, while Luminex’s xMAP technology enables detection of up to 500 proteins and is the most prevalent N-plex ELISA platform on the market. These assays are well established, accessible, and efficient, and are often applied to clinical biomarker discovery and research. Over the next five years, the market for N-plex ELISA products is projected to nearly double.

For certain applications, an even higher plex is desired, and an approach known as affinity-based detection can be useful in these scenarios. Similar to DNA microarrays, these methods identify and measure proteins in a low-concentration sample with oligonucleotide-tagged antibodies. Olink, a proteomics company established in 2004 and headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden, is a dominant player in this area with a leading product based on patented technology. Olink’s Proximity Extension Assay (PEA) combines antibody binding and DNA hybridization to quantify as many as 1,100 proteins, depending on the panels used. Results are read out by either real-time PCR or next-generation sequencing. In addition to the achievement of an elevated plex, these assays are capable of analyzing low-concentration samples and require low sample volume, making them well suited for clinical research when sample availability is limited (for example, Olink’s PEA requires just 1 microliter when analyzing via PCR). Affinity-based detection is an emerging technique in the next-gen proteomics market beginning to build value and is expected to grow by at least an order of magnitude in the next five years.

Two further next-generation proteomics approaches are spatial profiling and single cell proteomics. Part of the larger field of spatial biology (the study of biological systems in their two- or three-dimensional contexts), spatial profiling uses antibody detection to locate cell types in tissue. These methods seek to interrogate proteins and their interactions deeply in situ, often for the purposes of biomarker discovery, tumor microenvironment characterization, and study of therapeutic targets and disease response. Single cell proteomics employs technologies like MS and mass cytometry at the single cell rather than population level.

Massachusetts-based Akoya Biosciences is leading the spatial biology charge with its PhenoCycler instrument and paired imaging platform, which allow users to automate staining and detection of as many as 100 biomarkers in tissue samples (the system boasts the ability to map 1 million cells in 10 minutes). On the single cell-side, Standard BioTools, formerly known as Fluidigm, is the exclusive provider of CyTof mass cytometry technology, which labels antibodies with metallic tags for time-of-flight MS readout of proteins in single cells. Across vendors, clinical research (especially oncology) and drug discovery are major applications of spatial and single-cell approaches, and biopharma is expected to account for two-thirds of demand for these techniques and products in 2027, by which time the market will have more than doubled.

Next-Gen Proteomics: High-Fidelity Enrichment, New Mass Spec, and Single-Molecule Fingerprinting

Mass spectrometry (MS) has long been a bedrock tool in proteomics investigations, with liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) especially key in analyzing the presence, identity, and quantity of proteins in a complex sample. But the expanding scope of proteomics research requires higher resolution than traditional MS techniques can offer, and as such, new sample preparation techniques that supplement and enhance MS workflows as well as novel MS approaches constitute a large swath of the next-gen proteomics market.

Several types of sample prep strategies have been designed to enhance enrichment and throughput. One broad class of methods employs particles to bind to and enrich for proteins in a sample that is subsequently analyzed by LC-MS or other MS techniques. Other approaches use subcellular fractionation to separate cellular components, while still others utilize depletion to remove abundant proteins from samples via immunoaffinity to boost detection of less abundant ones. High-fidelity enrichment tools are typically applied to drug target discovery and development, clinical biomarker discovery, and population-scale studies. Key companies include Evosep, which provides tips and columns designed to improve binding and sensitivity in chromatography, and Seer, which offers a magnetic nanoparticle panel and automated liquid handler compatible with most LC-MS instruments. This market, while nascent today, is expected to grow by an order of magnitude by 2027, driven by the technique’s ability to simplify workflow, increase throughput, and quicken turnaround time.

In addition to these turnkey sample prep solutions, novel MS methods that improve upon the sensitivity and resolution of conventional approaches have become available. If MS can be thought of as comprising three dimensions—retention time, peptide mass, and spectral peak intensity—an approach known as “4D proteomics” seeks to add a fourth. By using ion mobility separation to segregate ions in the gas phase before coupling with MS, users can interrogate a sample for proteins of lower abundance and decrease acquisition time. Bruker leads the market with its disruptive timsTOF instruments, and other major providers of ion mobility mass spec instruments include Agilent, Waters, and Thermo Fisher.

Another novel MS strategy, limited proteolysis mass spectrometry (LiP-MS), enables users to chart structural changes across the entire proteome. The LiP-MS technique is proprietary to Switzerland-based company Biognosys, which offers the approach as a contract research service. Biognosys made a splash at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR)’s 2022 annual meeting presenting drug discovery data derived from its proteomics platforms, and has several collaborations with pharmaceutical firms, most notably AstraZeneca.

While these novel MS methods provide high resolution and sensitivity, they still require specialized expertise and centralized equipment like traditional MS, and other drawbacks include their complexity and length of workflow. These approaches are typically applied to drug studies, clinical biomarker discovery, proteome atlas creation, and in situations where particular proteins have to be interrogated deeply. These technologies comprise a substantial market today that is expected to double over the next six years, driven by adoption by biopharma.

An emerging strategy known as single-molecule fingerprinting is also well suited to these applications. This class of approaches aims to identify the entire chemical character of individual protein molecules via an end-to-end platform. One player is Nautilus Biotechnology, which offers a single molecule platform that involves preparation of protein arrays, cycled application of fluorescent affinity probes, and analysis with machine learning software. Another is Erisyon, whose “fluorosequencing” workflow labels amino acids on peptides in a sample with fluorophores, images the sample before and after an Edman reaction is performed to remove the N-terminal amino acid, and infers sequence information based on changes in fluorescence intensity when compared to a reference database. Single molecule fingerprinting technologies are still emerging and do not yet have a market. TDA expects these approaches to show high growth driven by the technique’s ability to interrogate proteins deeply at potentially lower cost; however, it is unproven if its accuracy will equal that of MS.

2023 TDA Instrument Industry Outlook Report Now Available


For seemingly everyone, the past few years have been turbulent in one way or an- other, as governments, industries, and individuals grappled with the consequences and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, although better understood and managed, persists. In some respects, the lab and analytical instruments market has been buffered from these effects; the industry, as a whole, has maintained its positive growth trajectory. Individual technology segments, however, experienced wildly different levels of demand in 2020, followed by rebounding in 2021 of the segments that were adversely affected. Most recently, in 2022, demand has returned to more expected levels, although the spikes in revenues for some technologies in the year prior resulted in contraction of the segments, despite strong sales.

In 2022, the lab and process analytical instruments industry grew 3.8% to $84.7 billion. Broken down, the market for lab instruments expanded 3.6% to reach $77.6 billion; the process analytical instruments (PAI), and the lab enclosures and furniture markets experienced gains of 3.7% and 13.3% in 2022, for $4.9 and $2.2 billion in revenues, respectively. Although market growth for lab furniture and enclosures accelerated, the expansion of all other lab technology segments and PAI decelerated in 2022. In fact, the life science instruments market actually decreased slightly in 2022, following two years of growth exceeding 25%.

Most of the technology segments expanded by mid-single digits. In terms of end markets, the industrial and pharma/ biopharma/CRO application sectors led growth, while demand from other/applied customers dropped as clinical/diagnostics needs waned in accordance with pandemic dynamics. Regional growth was uneven as well, with demand in North America rising fastest, in part a result of the strong US dollar.

Download TDA’s 2024 Industry Outlook report in full to continue reading.

The Need and Opportunity for Next-Generation Proteomics Tools

Since the term “proteome” first appeared in the scientific literature in 1995, interest in proteomics research and its use in applications like drug discovery, tumor characterization, and disease biomarker identification has exploded. With that growth has come a need for new approaches to catalog and study the proteome, as conventional techniques often fall short in accomplishing the specificity, sensitivity, and throughput required by ambitious emerging research efforts and applications.

Mass spectrometry and immunoassays like ELISA (enzyme-linked immunoassay) have traditionally been employed in proteomics research. While mass spec has long been the workhorse of protein biology, it requires specialized expertise and centralized equipment to complete lengthy analysis that can take weeks to months. Immunoassays have the benefit of being efficient and easily performed on the lab bench but lack multiplexing capabilities as they typically detect only a single molecular feature of a single protein.

Enter next-generation proteomics, a fast-growing group of technologies and approaches that circumvent these deficiencies and enable large-scale experiments with high sensitivity and the ability to capture the proteome’s dynamic range. These tools include novel mass spectrometry techniques, pre-mass spec high fidelity enrichment, spatial and single-cell proteomics, multiplex immunoassays, high plex affinity-based detection, and single molecule fingerprinting, each of which has its strengths, limitations, and ideal applications.

Novel mass spec comprises 4D proteomics, which incorporates ion mobility spectrometry as the “fourth dimension” of analysis to broaden coverage and boost acquisition speed, and limited proteolysis mass spec (LiP-MS), which incorporates protease digestion steps with data-independent acquisition protein quantification to build an unbiased list of proteome sites. Pre-mass spec high fidelity enrichment solutions, which use nanoparticles or depletion and fractionation to increase throughput of mass spec, are also available on the market today.

Other next-generation tools are well suited to fine-tuned study of the tumor microenvironment, like spatial proteomics, which uses antibody detection to locate cell types in tissue, and single-cell proteomics, which employs technologies like mass spec and mass cytometry at the single-cell rather than population level. These approaches are also often applied to drug discovery and development, as are affinity-based detection methods, which detect and measure several thousand proteins in one low-concentration sample with tagged antibodies.

Affinity-based techniques combine precision with high-speed turnaround, as do multiplex immunoassays, which use beads to simultaneously detect multiple proteins within small volumes at high sensitivity. Multiplex assays are well suited for clinical biomarker discovery, as is single molecule fingerprinting, a novel and developing approach that aims to identify the entire chemical character of individual protein molecules.

With major players including Bruker, Akoya Biosciences, and Olink, TDA estimates the market for these next-generation technologies represents about 8% of the overall proteomics market, with a value of around $0.6 billion. By 2027, we expect these novel approaches will grow to be over a quarter of the total proteomics market and will show compound annual growth rates of more than 30%. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing additional articles exploring how these emerging technologies are poised to change proteomics research. Check back soon for more.

M&A Highlights August 29–November 14

Danaher to Separate Environmental and Applied Segments into New Company

Washington, DC, September 14, 2022: Washington, DC-based conglomerate Danaher will separate its Environmental & Applied Solutions segment into a new, independent, publicly traded company. The new company will contain Danaher’s Water Quality and Product Identification businesses, including Hach, a manufacturer of water quality testing instruments and reagents, and X-rite, a manufacturer of spectrophotometers and other color analysis products. After the separation, which is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2023, Danaher will be composed of its Life Sciences and Diagnostics segments, including companies like Beckman Coulter, Leica Biosystems, and Integrated DNA Technologies.

More about Neurescence: Neurescence’s microscopes are used to image and stimulate neurons in free-moving animals via fiber-bundles connected to devices mounted off the animals’ heads. Their flagship Chromatone system enables simultaneous calcium imaging and optical stimulation of neurons and includes customizable software for data visualization and analysis.

More about Evident: Previously known as Olympus Scientific Solutions, Evident manufactures life sciences and industrial microscopes and accessories as well as non-destructive testing solutions and x-ray fluorescence analyzers.

Bruker Acquires Neuroscience Microscope Providers Inscopix and Neurescence

Mountain View, CA, November 8, 2022: Bruker announced it acquired Inscopix, a manufacturer of miniaturized microscopes for neuroscience applications founded in 2011 and based in Mountain View, CA. With the acquisition, Inscopix joins Bruker’s portfolio of in-vivo brain imaging technologies, including multiphoton microscopes and preclinical MRI systems. Based in Billerica, MA, Bruker also provides mass spectrometry, gas and liquid chromatography, X-ray, and molecular spectroscopy technologies. Financial details were not disclosed.

More about Inscopix: Inscopix offers a 2-gram fluorescence microscope that can be mounted on the head of a freely moving mouse to monitor and study brain activity. In addition to this miniscope, the company’s products include platforms that allow for in vivo calcium imaging, visualization of multiple cell populations in distinct colors, and behavioral imaging as well as software for analysis of imaging data.

Billerica, MA, November 14, 2022: Bruker will also purchase 100% of the shares of Neurescence, a Toronto-based provider of miniature fiber-bundle fluorescence microscopes for neuroimaging in live animals, which was founded in 2015. Along with our recent addition of Inscopix, this acquisition bolsters Bruker’s position as the leading provider of freely behaving animal imaging and photostimulation, said Dr. Mark R. Munch, PhD, president, NANO Group, Bruker. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

More about Neurescence: Neurescence’s microscopes are used to image and stimulate neurons in free-moving animals via fiber-bundles connected to devices mounted off the animals’ heads. Their flagship Chromatone system enables simultaneous calcium imaging and optical stimulation of neurons and includes customizable software for data visualization and analysis.

More about the separation: The spin-off will be known as EAS until a new name is announced at a later date, and current Danaher executive vice president Jennifer L. Honeycutt will become president and CEO of the new company. While part of Danaher, the EAS segment generated revenue of approximately $4.7 billion in 2021.

Olympus Sells Microscope Unit Evident to Private Equity

Tokyo, August 29, 2022: Tokyo-based Olympus, a manufacturer of optical products, announced it will sell its microscope unit Evident to private equity firm Bain Capital for about $3.1 billion. After all shares of Evident are transferred to Bain on January 4, 2023, Olympus will operate as a global medical technology company focusing on its endoscopic and therapeutic solutions sections, the company said in a release announcing the deal.

More about Evident: Previously known as Olympus Scientific Solutions, Evident manufactures life sciences and industrial microscopes and accessories as well as non-destructive testing solutions and x-ray fluorescence analyzers.

Bruker Acquires Neuroscience Microscope Providers Inscopix and Neurescence

Mountain View, CA, November 8, 2022: Bruker announced it acquired Inscopix, a manufacturer of miniaturized microscopes for neuroscience applications founded in 2011 and based in Mountain View, CA. With the acquisition, Inscopix joins Bruker’s portfolio of in-vivo brain imaging technologies, including multiphoton microscopes and preclinical MRI systems. Based in Billerica, MA, Bruker also provides mass spectrometry, gas and liquid chromatography, X-ray, and molecular spectroscopy technologies. Financial details were not disclosed.

More about Inscopix: Inscopix offers a 2-gram fluorescence microscope that can be mounted on the head of a freely moving mouse to monitor and study brain activity. In addition to this miniscope, the company’s products include platforms that allow for in vivo calcium imaging, visualization of multiple cell populations in distinct colors, and behavioral imaging as well as software for analysis of imaging data.

Billerica, MA, November 14, 2022: Bruker will also purchase 100% of the shares of Neurescence, a Toronto-based provider of miniature fiber-bundle fluorescence microscopes for neuroimaging in live animals, which was founded in 2015. Along with our recent addition of Inscopix, this acquisition bolsters Bruker’s position as the leading provider of freely behaving animal imaging and photostimulation, said Dr. Mark R. Munch, PhD, president, NANO Group, Bruker. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

More about Neurescence: Neurescence’s microscopes are used to image and stimulate neurons in free-moving animals via fiber-bundles connected to devices mounted off the animals’ heads. Their flagship Chromatone system enables simultaneous calcium imaging and optical stimulation of neurons and includes customizable software for data visualization and analysis.

With Pipette Tip Washing Machines, Grenova Is on a Mission to Make Labs Greener

Walk into any life sciences lab, and you’re bound to see beakers or other containers filled with discarded pipette tips on each bench top. Between tips, tubes, and plates, research runs on single-use plastic. Recent plastics price spikes, manufacturing shortages, and supply-chain disruptions have hobbled labs, and COVID testing and treatment research have amplified need for these items. For example, a lab technician might use ten pipette tips to run one coronavirus test, between handling the sample, the test reagents, and setting up the PCR reaction.

All that plastic adds up—even pipette tips, which are typically each no bigger than a pen cap. In 2015, a trio of bioscience researchers surveyed their department at the University of Exeter to create an estimate of the total plastic waste generated by the world’s biological, medical, and agricultural research labs. They calculated that global lab research generates around 5.5 million tons of plastic waste a year–enough material to make over 100 million recycled-plastic park benches. Ali Safavi quickly noticed this deluge of plastic waste while working as a lab engineer. He saw labs constantly buying and using a huge volume of pipette tips, and with no reliable and cost-effective way to reuse or recycle them they just ended up in the landfill after one use. “I discovered that there is a hole in the laboratory consumables market,” Safavi says. “It’s a linear, not cyclical model. It’s not sustainable and it won’t last forever.”

In 2014 Safavi founded Grenova, a biotechnology company based in Richmond, Virginia that makes pipette tip washing machines. Their flagship device TipNovus sits on a bench top and works a bit like a kitchen dishwasher. Users load racks of used tips into the machine and input a customizable wash cycle; then, using Grenova’s proprietary cleaning solution, the machine washes, sanitizes, and dries up to 24 tip racks an hour. Effluent from each wash cycle can be sanitized under UV light in the machine then disposed down the drain, while any runoff containing radioactive material can be collected in a vessel attached to the washer and treated separately according to a lab or institution’s protocol.

Today, Grenova’s washers are used in labs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and in others across government, academia, and industry. Tips sanitized by the machine have been tested and validated for use in techniques like mass spectrometry and ELISA, as well as in COVID-19 PCR testing, and the company says some customers report reusing them up to 25 times.

After their final use the company suggests users wash tips one last time to remove any lingering contaminants and to then recycle them. But labs can’t just toss washed tips right into the recycling bin; they must first check in with their institution’s waste management service and ask if they will take clean tips, confirming that they accept the specific plastic they are made of. This can be an arduous process and isn’t possible for all labs, so many will still have to trash tips after several washes and uses. Grenova says they hope to someday achieve the cyclical model envisioned by Safavi, in which users return their tips to designated recycling programs or back the manufacturer after their last wash.

In a ten-minute cleaning cycle, the Tipnovus generates about 109 grams of CO2, while conventional disposal of a 96-count rack of pipette tips generates an estimated 1.8 kilograms of CO2. According to Grenova, 1,201,932,255 pipette tips have been washed and reused thanks to their products, cutting a total of 4,581 metric tons of carbon emissions and 2,650,848 pounds of plastic waste from the environment.

Labs can reap other benefits from tip washing beyond “going green.” Grenova estimates its devices have saved its customers a total of $84,135,258. One CDC lab that studies carcinogens in tobacco estimates normally spending about $48,000 a year on tips. They cut that bill in half with Grenova’s washer, reporting savings of around $24,000 per year by washing and reusing tips used for solvent transfer in liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry 10 times.

Looking beyond the pipette tip, Grenova recently released a microwell plate cleaner called Purus to enable the reuse of 96-well plates. It’s “one more step forward for those in the life sciences community who are serious about eliminating needless plastic waste while cutting lab costs and improving supply chain resilience,” Safavi says.

“Stormy Waters” Ahead Projected in IMF’s October World Economic Outlook

As global inflation remains the highest it’s been in several decades, about one-third of the global economy is expected to contract this year or next. In its October 2022 World Economic Outlook (WEO): Countering the Cost-of-Living Crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects global growth will remain at 3.2% in 2022, unchanged from July’s forecast, and will drop to 2.7% in 2023, a 0.2% downgrade from that projection. Global inflation is expected to rise to 8.8% in 2022 but decline to 6.5% in 2023 and to 4.1% in 2024.

The world’s three largest economies (the US, the EU, and China) will face slowdowns into next year. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created an energy crisis in Europe and will reduce growth in the euro area to 3.1% in 2022 and to 0.5% in 2023. In China, growth is expected to stall to 3.2% in 2022 and to 4.4% in 2023 because of continued coronavirus lockdowns and the collapse of the country’s housing market, and in the US, the Federal Reserve’s successive interest rate hikes will drop growth to 1.6% in 2022 and to 1% in 2023.

These slowdowns have contributed to rising food and energy prices, and many households are experiencing what the WEO calls a cost-of-living crisis. In all, the IMF says the world economy is experiencing its weakest growth since 2001, save for the slowdowns experienced during the coronavirus pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis, and warns that global recession is on the horizon. “The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” writes IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas in the report.

Against this global backdrop, experts predict that a US-specific recession is likely within the next year. Despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to raise interest rates five times since March 2022, US inflation persists, with the consumer price index rising 8.2% between September 2021 and September 2022. And while the country added 263,000 jobs in September, the US labor market shows signs of cooling off after adding 315,000 jobs in August and 528,000 in July.

Bloomberg Economics model predicts a 100% likelihood of a recession by October 2023, while a separate Bloomberg survey of economists returned the more measured prediction of 60% likelihood. And some experts think the US is already in hot economic water: 11% of economists surveyed in early October by the National Association for Business Economics believe the country is already experiencing a recession. There are signs a recession will be mild and short, as predicted by a majority of global CEOs polled by KPMG. US unemployment remains low at 3.5% in September 2022 and likely will not skyrocket in a coming downturn.

As in any recession, retail, hospitality, and other service industries will take the most immediate hit. While US retail sales in September were unchanged from those in August, customers have already started to cut back on large purchases like electronics, appliances, and cars. After the pandemic-induced housing boom, new builds and existing home sales are expected to decline into 2023 as buyers face higher mortgage rates, with some experts estimating housing prices to drop by 20%. As inflation remains high, institutions and laboratories will have less cash available to purchase new analytical instruments. However, analytical instruments and related chemicals may be needed to respond to the energy crisis spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Global coal demand has increased as natural gas prices have soared, and atomic spectroscopy instruments will be needed to test for environmental pollutants.

With the continued fallout from the war in Ukraine, stubbornly persistent inflation, and plunging global growth, the WEO predicts that recession is on the horizon. “The global economy is headed for stormy waters,” writes Gourinchas.