Synthetic Biology: Publication Trends

Overview

A recent article in nature communications highlighted that synthetic biology related products are now widely infiltrating society with widespread market penetration expected to occur by 2030. Some higher profile recent technologies include isolated and purified chemicals produced by engineered cells or enzymes. Engineered cells themselves such as engineered bacteria, CAR-T cell therapy and genome edited products. Innovations in metabolic & automated strain engineering, directed evolution (2018 Nobel Prize), gene circuit design, metagenomic discovery and genome editing (2020 Nobel Prize) have enabled the development of these technologies.

The patent publication & filing trends for SynBio EP A1 & A2 specifications reveal an increasing trendline, with only a slight decrease occurring in 2024. Reflecting the speed of innovation within the synthetic biology field when using patent data as a proxy for innovation in figure 1.

The bespoke dataset investigates EPO SynBio patents with the restriction that the INPADOC patent family has originated since 2015. Whilst this restriction has enabled us to manage the overall dataset size and explore more topic areas, it can lead to a restricted number of publications occurring in 2015. To account for the restriction, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was calculated from 2016-2024.

During 2016-2024 the growth in published EPO synthetic biology patent publications is accelerating with a CAGR of 14.9%. Reflecting a very strong average growth rate at the EPO during this period. There was a very slight decline of 1.4% occurring in 2024 year-on-year. However, the most recent complete set of patent filings in 2022 (14,270 filings) indicates that SynBio related innovation is comfortably maintaining momentum.

Publication dates are used as an indicator of demand. Patent publication data looks forward, for example, peaks and troughs reflect changes in underlying filing activity from the years prior. Recent publication figures can be impacted by the potential for 18 month publication delays, see limitations section for further information.

The INPADOC based legal status information for the synthetic biology patents published since 2015 have been aggregated in figure 2.

The elevated CAGR of 14.9% is reflected in the legal status stats. The proportion of alive patents is now 76% (previously 75%) which still reflects the high growth rate during this period. Patenting activity is increasing as recently as 2023 with only a negligible drop-off in 2024. Over 50% of published filings are pending with around 23% of the EPO patents identified achieving granted status, reflecting a field which is gaining momentum.