Giles Barton, market and technology product manager for lab filtration, Cytiva explores how lab filtration changes lives.
Cytiva
Lab filtration is driving a transformative shift in laboratories around the world, reshaping critical processes in science, healthcare, and manufacturing. As a foundational step in sample preparation and quality control, it supports safety, consistency, and innovation in ways that improve lives every day.
The scale of this impact is significant: the global laboratory filtration market was valued at $4.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $6.1 billion by 2029. This growth is fuelled by the increasing complexity of research, rising regulatory standards, and the need for precision in sample preparation across multiple scientific and industrial fields.
Enabling healthcare breakthroughs
Pharmaceutical manufacturing relies on stringent testing at multiple stages, from raw material to final product release. Lab filtration helps ensure that component analyses are accurate, consistent, and repeatable, essential for medicines that meet global standards. Analytical testing of pharmaceuticals helps confirm the consistency, purity, and efficacy of drugs, including during specific regimes like dissolution testing, where release rates of active ingredients are assessed.
Cell culture, a foundational technique in biological research and biotechnology, depends heavily on filtration. Whether sterilising growth media, venting culture vessels, clarifying harvests, or preparing samples for final analysis, filtration supports every step of cell growth and protein expression workflows.
For example, in producing recombinant proteins, cells serve as biological factories. Filtration helps ensure these processes remain sterile, efficient, and productive, underpinning fields such as structural biology, diagnostics, and drug development.
In addition, filtration supports the development of advanced therapies. In cell and gene therapy workflows, contamination control is essential due to the complexity and sensitivity of the materials involved. Filtration helps safeguard these high-value products during preparation, formulation, and delivery.
Filtration also helps researchers scale therapeutic solutions by maintaining consistency in bioprocessing. This is especially critical in clinical trials, where reproducibility and regulatory confidence must be maintained across development phases.
Protecting public health
The air we breathe and the water we drink are fundamental to public health. Filtration plays a critical role in monitoring both, identifying harmful pollutants and ensuring compliance with regulations.
For air quality, filters are essential in collecting and analysing particulate matter, whether measuring total suspended particles or specific size fractions in ambient or industrial air. Selecting the right filter helps ensure test accuracy and regulatory compliance.
Environmental water quality and contamination can have significant and wide-ranging impacts on ecosystems, human health, and biodiversity. Contaminants arise from numerous sources, including agricultural, industrial, and domestic runoff. Rigorous testing helps ensure that water is safe, fit for purpose, and compliant with relevant regulations.
Modern analytical science can detect thousands of chemical and biological threats in a single sample. Reliable filtration is vital for reproducibility, regulatory confidence, and public safety. Unreliable results not only risk public health, but they also increase lab costs and workloads through unnecessary retests. Though time- and resource-intensive, water testing remains a cornerstone of public health efforts.
In stormwater monitoring and municipal wastewater facilities, lab filtration supports testing for pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, and heavy metals, which are environmental risks that can accumulate over time. This testing contributes directly to sustainability and ecosystem protection.
Driving innovation
Filtration is advancing research at the forefront of science. High-throughput DNA printing, powered by specialised filters, accelerates genetic research and brings personalised medicine closer to reality.
In underserved regions, drone-delivered samples for malaria testing depend on robust collection tools like sample cards. These enable efficient blood collection, reliable transport, and timely analysis, even in remote locations. Filtration supports infectious disease monitoring and population health studies where infrastructure is limited.
As medical diagnostics evolve toward point-of-care testing, filtration plays a key role in ensuring rapid sample preparation and reliable results. For example, in microfluidic diagnostic devices, built-in membranes and filters help manage fluids and capture target molecules, bringing faster answers to clinicians and patients.
Lab filtration also enables faster iteration in biomedical research. Whether optimising vaccine candidates or accelerating biomarker discovery, researchers rely on sample prep systems that offer precision and speed, powered in many cases by filters no larger than a coin.
Pioneering sustainability
Sustainability is a growing frontier for lab filtration. Some developers are exploring biodegradable materials, such as cellulose-based alternatives to conventional dry cell batteries separators, for potential use in lithium-ion batteries. These innovations help reduce electronic waste and support a more sustainable future.
Cellulose offers an organic alternative to polymers traditionally used in battery separators. Emerging applications in lithium-ion batteries suggest that cellulose membranes may provide both performance and sustainability benefits, advancing cleaner energy solutions.
The global e-waste management market is expected to grow in the coming years, as governments and industries prioritise resource recovery and circular design. Lab filtration technologies can contribute to this shift by embracing sustainable manufacturing practices, reducing plastic waste, and optimising single-use formats for recyclability.
In the lab setting, some manufacturers are also working to reduce solvent waste and incorporate recyclable materials into their filtration product lines. Such improvements add up across thousands of daily lab operations.
A catalyst for progress
These examples show how lab filtration contributes to progress across healthcare, environmental protection, and everyday consumer goods. By enabling precision, innovation, and safety, filtration supports a healthier, safer, and more sustainable world.
Continued collaboration among industries, researchers, and innovators will be essential to fully realise the transformative potential of this foundational technology.