Drug Discovery Market Size To Rise USD 160.31 Billion By 2034 | Statifacts

(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) The global drug discovery market size to record USD 72.01 billion in 2025 and estimated to hit around USD 160.31 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period from 2025 to 2034. A study published by Statifacts a sister firm of Precedence Research.

Ottawa, April 14, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Statifacts, the global drug discovery market size was evaluated at USD 65.88 billion in 2024 and is predicted to grow around USD 160.31 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period 2025 to 2034. The drug discovery market growth is driven by collaborative advancements, open innovation, a shift toward precision or personalized medicine, increased availability of omics data, integration of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), and increasing R&D investment from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Request a Sample Databook to Explore our Insights -

Industry Snapshot
Drug discovery is the process of identifying and characterizing molecules with the capacity to safely modulate disease, to bring medicines that can enhance patients' lives. It is a lengthy and resource-intensive method to requires close cooperation across many disciplines. Drug discovery is essential for treating illness or disease for which no other treatment exists, or it provides additional benefits over the prevailing treatments, like fewer drug-drug interactions, enhanced amenability, higher therapeutic efficacy, and less adverse effects.

The drug discovery market refers to the production, distribution, and use of drug discovery, which is a research process that identifies and develops a molecule that produces a desired effect in a living organism. Preclinical drug discovery aims to deliver one or more clinical candidate molecules, each of which has sufficient evidence of biological activity at a target related to disease and also sufficient safety and drug-like properties so that it can be entered into human testing.

Advancements in the drug discovery process are undergoing a profound transformation, with novel technologies like organoids, nanotechnology, AI, and organs-on-a-chip models playing an important role. In March 2025, a new AI tool for drug discovery, TxGemma launched by Google. It helps to enhance the efficiency of AI-based drug discovery.

Drug Discovery Market Key Highlights

• North America led the global market with the highest market share in 2024.
• Asia Pacific is predicted to grow at the fastest rate in the market during the forecast period.
• By drug type, the small molecule segment held the largest market share in 2024.
• By drug type, the large molecule segment is predicted to experience rapid growth in the upcoming years.
• By end-user, the pharmaceutical companies segment is estimated to hold the highest market share in 2024.
• By end-user, the CRO segment is projected to grow substantially during the forecast period.

Major Key Trends in the Drug Discovery Market:

• Stringent regulatory guidelines: The benefits of stringent regulatory guidelines include increased profitability, reduced risk, improved branding, fostering healthy competition, enhanced safety and efficiency in the workplace, and avoidance of unnecessary legal issues.
• Increasing adoption of single-use technologies: With single-use technologies, validation, cleaning, and sterilization between production runs are reduced. This significantly reduces changeover times, making operations more efficient and faster.
• Innovation in bioprocessing technology: In the bioprocess workflow, many key stages are transformed by the single-use technologies. These advancements reduce contamination risks, provide versatility, and improve cost efficiency.
  

Order the Premium Databook Today at the Discounted Rate of $1550!

Limitations & Challenges in the Drug Discovery Market:

• High initial investment costs: Drug discovery is a lengthy and expensive process. The use of innovative drug discovery informatics tools like hardware, software, and training, which needs a high investment cost.
• Data security and privacy concerns: Data privacy risks include phishing scams, online tracking, data breaches, identity theft, and social engineering attacks. Data security risks also include failure to access control, implement data encryption, and secure data storage practices that may expose sensitive data to theft.

Development of Drug Discovery Platforms: Market's Largest Potential
With sophisticated data modeling, companies can run through“AI-based drug discovery platforms” to determine novel medical uses. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the drug discovery process, offering enhanced speed, accuracy, and efficiency. The benefits of AI in drug discovery include that it plays an important role in safety prediction, it can swiftly analyze high datasets of chemical compounds and their interrelationships with biological targets, it is highly compatible with personalized medicine , it targets rare diseases, cost savings and a rapid drug discovery process.

• In March 2025, the launch of a new end-to-end technology platform was announced by Boehringer Ingelheim, and the platform was designed to streamline data and processes, allowing more efficient and faster drug development.
  

Regional Analysis:

North America Held the Dominant Position: Technological Advancement to Support Growth

North America held the largest share of the drug discovery market in 2024. New Drug Development American consumers have the advantage of having access to the most advanced and safest innovative pharmaceutical system in the world. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry develops a variety of new drugs that provide valuable medical advantages, which drives the growth of the market in the region.

Major Factors for the Market's Expansion in North America

• In July 2023, the acquisition of one of North America's largest discovery Contract Research Organizations (CROs), Canada-based NuChem Sciences, was announced by leading integrated drug discovery partner Sygnature Discovery.
• In July 2024, for drug discovery, McGill, industry, CQDM, and Brain Canada collaborated.

What Expect from Asian Countries till 2034?
Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow at the fastest rate in the market during the forecast period. Countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and China, have become key players in AI-based drug discovery because of substantial spending in research, efforts to attract top talent, and strong academic institutions driving the growth of the drug discovery market.

India: India offers many benefits for clinical research, such as a high patient population not exposed to treatment, world-class health services with well-trained doctors, and has appeared as a strong base for clinical trials .

• In February 2025, public access to the cancer genome database to help cancer research and drug discovery in India was launched by IIT Madras.
  

Japan: Japan's drug laws are very strict. The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PDMA) is the regulatory agency that reviews the efficacy, quality, and safety of medical products to be marketed in Japan from a scientific aspect.

• In September 2024, for the master service agreement for drug discovery projects, Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Inc. (Axcelead DDP, HQ. Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan) collaborated with Academia Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (HQ. San Diego, CA, USA).
  

Drug Discovery Market Scope

Report Attribute	Key Statistics
Market Size in 2025	USD 72.01 Billion
Market Size by 2034	USD 160.31 Billion
Growth Rate from 2025 to 2034	CAGR of 9.3%
Base Year	2024
Forecast Period	2025 to 2034
Segments Covered	By Drug Type, By End User, By Technology, and By Region
Regions Covered	North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa

Drug Type Insights
The small molecule segment maintained a leading position in the drug discovery market in 2024. Small molecule drugs offer many benefits, starting with their high oral bioavailability, which enables convenient self-administration, most of them in oral solid dose (OSD) form. This advances patient compliance, making them suitable for the long-term treatment of chronic diseases.

• In April 2025, the AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center, which was created to integrate AI with traditional drug discovery methods to identify and design new small-molecule therapeutics with unprecedented precision and speed, was launched by The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
  

The large molecule segment is set to experience the fastest rate of market growth from 2025 to 2034. Large molecules are also known as biologics , which are derived from living organisms and are inherently critical to develop and manufacture. As compared to small-molecule chemical API, biological drugs mostly end up in a parenteral drug product rather than in an oral dose.

• In October 2024, to advance small and large molecule drug discovery with a multimodal AI platform powered by laboratory automation, Accenture collaborated with 1910 Genetics, a biotechnology company.
  

End-user Insights
The pharmaceutical companies segment dominated the drug discovery market. The pharmaceutical companies sector deals with the development, discovery, production, and marketing of drugs licensed for use as medicine. It operates under strict regulations to ensure the safety and effectiveness of drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are responsible for the continuous delivery of life-saving medicines to patients. Pharmaceutical companies conduct continuous testing to ensure that medicines meet quality standards before they are exported to the market.
The CRO segment is projected to expand rapidly in the drug discovery market in the coming years. CROs provide critical information about the safety and effectiveness of the new drugs and play an important role in ensuring drugs are safe for use by patients. CRO also provides access to specialized expertise and scalability in conducting trials. CRO can offer cost savings for sponsors by eliminating the time it takes to conduct a trial compared to a sponsor doing so in-house.

Browse More Research Reports:

• The global drug and gene delivery systems market size accounted for USD 727.45 million in 2024 and is expected to exceed around USD 1,754 million by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 9.2% from 2025 to 2034.
• The U.S. cancer immunotherapy drug discovery outsourcing market size accounted for USD 400.10 million in 2024 and is expected to exceed around USD 1,037.76 million by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 10% from 2025 to 2034.
• The U.S. drug discovery market size is calculated at USD 25.20 billion in 2024 and is predicted to reach around USD 60.21 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 9.1% from 2025 to 2034.
• The U.S. genomics market size was estimated at USD 13.85 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit around USD 67.15 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 17.1% during the forecast period from 2025 to 2034.
• The global eDiscovery market size is calculated at USD 13,141 million in 2024 and is predicted to attain around USD 29,439 million by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 8.4% from 2025 to 2034.
• The global antibody discovery market size is calculated at USD 8,700 million in 2024 and is predicted to reach around USD 22,570 million by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 10% from 2025 to 2034.
• The global cloud-based drug discovery platform market size is predicted to gain around USD 8,029 million by 2034 from USD 2,429 million in 2024 with a CAGR of 12.7% 2025 to 2034.
  

Order the Premium Databook Today at the Discounted Rate of $1550!

Drug Discovery Market Top Companies:

• Pfizer Inc.
• GlaxoSmithKline PLC
• Merck & Co. Inc.
• Agilent Technologies Inc.
• Eli Lilly and Company
• F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd
• Bayer AG
• Abbott Laboratories Inc.
• AstraZeneca PLC
• Shimadzu Corp

Recent Breakthroughs in the Global Drug Discovery Market :

• In March 2025, TxGemma, an open collection of AI models designed to improve the efficiency of clinical trial and drug discovery predictions, was launched by Google DeepMind.
• In January 2025, Manas AI with $26.4M for AI drug discovery was launched by LinkedIn Cofounder. The company, in collaboration with Microsoft, goal to develop cancer medicines with treatments for rare conditions and autoimmune diseases.

Segments Covered in the Report

By Drug Type

• Small Molecule
• Large Molecule

By End User

• Pharmaceutical Companies
• CROs
• Others
  

By Technology

• High Throughput Screening
• Pharmacogenomics
• Combinatorial Chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Other Technologies
  

By Region

• North America
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East and Africa
  

You can place an order or ask any questions, please feel free to contact us at ...

Statifacts offers subscription services for data and analytics insights. This page provides options to explore and purchase a subscription tailored to your needs, granting access to valuable statistical resources and tools. Access here -

Contact US

• Ballindamm 22, 20095 Hamburg, Germany
• Web:
• Europe: +44 7383 092 044
  

About US

Statifacts is a leading provider of comprehensive market research and analytics services, offering over 1,000,000 market and custoer data sets across various industries. Their platform enables businesses to make informed strategic decisions by providing full access to statistics, downloadable in formats such as XLS, PDF, and PNG.

Our Trusted Data Partners:
Precedence Research | Towards Healthcare | Towards Packaging | Towards Automotive | Towards Food and Beverages | Towards Chemical and Materials | Towards Dental | Towards EV Solutions | Nova One Advisor

MENAFN14042025004107003653ID1109427963