Mycoplasmas are the bacteria, which represent one of the most prevalent and serious sources of contamination in cell cultures. They induce changes to cell cultures such as altered growth rates, morphological changes, chromosomal aberrations, and metabolism alterations. The market includes kits, reagents, instruments, and services used for mycoplasma testing in research and manufacturing applications.

The competitive landscape includes information of the top players offering mycoplasma testing products & services and outlines the findings and analysis on how well each vendor performs within our criteria. The vendor evaluations are based on two broad categories — Product Offerings and Business Strategy. Each category carries different criteria, based on which the vendors have been evaluated. The evaluation criteria considered under product offerings include breadth of offerings, features/functionality, and supports. The business strategy is evaluated on the basis of geographic reach, growth strategy, and viability.

Vendors who fall into this category receive high scores for most of the evaluation criteria. They have a strong and established product portfolio and a very strong market presence. They provide mature, innovative, and reputable mycoplasma testing products.

The players considered as dynamic are established vendors with very strong business strategies. However, they provide limited offerings and are less innovative. They focus on a specific type of technology related to the product.

Innovators are vendors that have demonstrated substantial product innovations as compared to their competitors. They have a strong product portfolio; however, do not have a strong business strategy for their overall business.

They are vendors with niche product offerings and are expected to gain a significant position in the market. They do not have developed business strategies as compared to other established vendors. In addition, they might be new entrants in the market and require some time before gaining traction in the market. On the basis of application, the mycoplasma testing market is segmented into cell line testing, virus testing, end-of-production cell testing, and other applications. The cell line testing segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global mycoplasma testing market. Factors such as a rapid growth of the biopharmaceutical industry and increasing demand for monoclonal antibodies are driving the growth of this segment. Cell line testing is expected to command the largest share of the mycoplasma testing market in 2017. Cell lines are used for research and biopharmaceutical production. Mycoplasma-infected cell culture is one of the major sources of contamination in other cell cultures. The contamination is spread by aerosols and generated during the handling of the mycoplasma-infected cell culture. Working with one cell culture at a time and preparing separate media and reagents for each individual cell line can prevent mycoplasma contamination. Virus seed stocks are vital components in the manufacturing of biological products; they are used as transformation vectors for biopharmaceutical production. Virus banks and master virus seed stocks are created to ensure reproducible production of vaccines and recombinant proteins. These banks require mycoplasma testing as part of a quality control measure under good manufacturing practice (GMP) protocols. Mycoplasma testing is also carried out for lot release testing for bulk viral harvest. End-of-production cells are harvested as part of biologics production. The harvested cells are further processed for the extraction and purification of biologics. These cells are usually produced by expanding cell stocks in fermenters. The large-scale fermentation processes used in biopharmaceutical production have several points of entry for mycoplasma contamination. End-of-production cell testing is recommended as part of GMP guidelines; it enables the identification of mycoplasma contamination at early stages, which can help in containing the contamination and reducing extensive losses.