With a leading analyst predicting that “Superbugs” will become a bigger killer than cancer by 2050, OpGen (OPGN) is suddenly in the middle of a promising area of demand. The small stock remains relatively unknown despite a potential large market opportunity and a peer with a much larger market value.

With over 2 million multi-drug resistant organism (MDROs) related illnesses each year, the financial impact to the economy already provides a significant market need even prior to a large death related issue. The question is whether OpGen is positioned to participate in this large and expanding market opportunity.

Rapidly Expanding Market

OpGen is leading the precision medicine informatics sector with a focus on MDRO market. Back in 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quantified the market as causing 2 million illnesses per year with 23,000 deaths resulting from these “SuperBugs”.

The cost to the system now is the healthcare impact of these illnesses. Patients spend a considerable amount of time in the hospital and it can cost around $50,000 per MDRO incident for an incredible total annual cost of $20 billion to the system just because people have become resistant to antibotics.

The deaths are a growing problem, but Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs fame wrote a review on the issue back in 2014 for the U.K. government that predicated a massive health crisis from the antibiotic resistance issue. Mr. O’Neill predicts that by 2050 antimicrobial resistant infections will cause 10 million deaths per year and surpass the deaths caused by both cancer and diabetes.

Mr. O’Neill made this statement to CNBC about the report:

No new classes of antibiotics have been created for decades and our current drugs are becoming less effective as resistance increases.

The R&D president at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) confirmed that antibiotic resistance is a very complex issue that could have a devastating impact if not resolved.