Winner profile: Immunostar
Following the launch of our first Antibody Awards in January this year we’ve been profiling some of the winners here on our blog.
Today we’re focusing on a small company, indeed, the winner of our category for the Small Company of the Year – Immunostar. Big isn’t always best, and this award recognised Immunostar for securing a large number of citations across all of the antibodies in its relatively small portfolio.
Immunostar is based in Wisconsin, USA, and was started in 1982 to offer specialist products for use in immunohistochemistry. The company changed its name over the years; Immuno Nuclear (1982), INCSTAR (1986), DiaSorin (1996), and finally ImmunoStar (2001). However, while the company name has changed over the years, its antibodies have stayed the same, contributing to today’s well tested and proven portfolio. Today, many of the company’s antibodies are used in neuroscience research.
In the ‘Small Company of the Year’ category Immunostar was up against a number of companies with portfolios of less than 1000 antibodies. However, the company’s line is well-characterised, with high quality primary antibodies, some of which have been offered for thirty years. All of the company’s antibodies are tested using immunohistochemistry and only those with the best staining results are made available for sale. For this reason, Immunostar’s portfolio is well proven and widely cited in academic literature.
Colleen Hammer, Director of Operations at Immunostar, said: “Because our antibodies are used successfully by so many researchers and published in more than a thousand papers with various techniques and species, customers can be confident to know what to expect.”
The company also aims to fully understand how its antibodies are used by researchers. For this reason, Immunostar offers its customers an opportunity to earn 50% off the purchase of antibodies in exchange for sharing their protocols and results.
To make this CiteAb Antibody Award, our team analysed the citation data generated through CiteAb. From this data we are able to gain a really clear picture of the way antibodies are used around the world. We can tell which countries are investing most in research using antibodies, which companies are seeing growth or decline, which antibodies are most successful and which areas of research are seeing growth.
ImmunoStar was established as the 2014 winner for this award established based on CiteAb citation data from the January – December 2014 period. We look forward to seeing which small company follows in Immunostar’s footsteps next year!
– Andrew and the CiteAb team.
