Top Antibodies in Research: 100 most cited products, 2025 update
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- Which antibodies are researchers citing in publications?
- Which companies are supporting researchers with frequently referenced products?
- Download the complete top 100 RUO antibody dataset
At CiteAb, we’ve developed AI-driven text mining technology to identify and understand antibody use across millions of publications, giving insights into research trends, leading companies and up-and-coming products. Learn more here.
Welcome to our third ‘top 100 product’ analysis for 2025, a series where we dig into citation data from life science publications to understand the research landscape.
By tracking how scientists cite research tools in their work, we can identify the products driving discovery today, spot upcoming market trends, and uncover the suppliers shaping the field.
Today, we are diving into the top 100 most cited research antibodies of the last year, taking in primary, secondary, monoclonal, polyclonal and recombinant RUO antibodies. At the end of this post, you’ll find a link to download the full dataset.
RUO Antibody Market Overview and Key Takeaways from the Top 100 Dataset
CiteAb Antibody Market datasets are drawn from a database of over 8 million RUO antibodies from around 400 companies. For this analysis we focused on 2024 citations, including peer reviewed publications and preprints.
Who are the leading RUO antibody companies?
Research Antibody Companies in the Top 100
The 2025 top 100 antibody list features products from 12 suppliers – unchanged from last year’s analysis. This highlights the maturity of the market and the continuing success of established players, supporting scientists in their work.
- Cell Signaling Technology leads, with 31 products in the top 100.
- Thermo Fisher Scientific – with their Invitrogen Antibodies brand – were the second most ranked supplier and strengthened their position, adding two more antibodies to the list.
- Abcam secured third place with a significant count of 18 of the top 100 cited products.
Together, these three companies account for over two thirds of the top 100 list.
It is worth noting that several companies outside of the top three did add products into the top 100 list, and with around 400 vendors globally supplying antibodies the market is far from static.
Who are the antibody suppliers to watch?
Casting our eye beyond the top three leaders in this dataset, several suppliers showed strong momentum:
- ABclonal expanded its presence by adding another product to the top 100, showing steady growth since they first entered the top 100 last year
- Proteintech made a breakthrough with one of its antibodies entering the top 10 most cited products for the first time – as predicted last year
- BD Biosciences narrowly missed out on the top 100, with their BD Pharmingen™ antibody placing at 102nd. Could they climb into the top 100 soon?
Eight companies which didn’t feature with products in the top 100 have antibodies in the top 200 cited antibody list, indicating that we could expect to see new entrants next year in the top 100 dataset.
Overall, these movements highlight the opportunity for growth in the antibody market.
Andrew Chalmers, CEO of CiteAb commented:
‘It’s really great to see the range of companies supporting scientists with antibodies powering published research and new discoveries. We will be interested to see how the established market leaders and growing companies impact the space in the future.’
Products Driving Change in the Antibody Market
Overall in the dataset, we noticed that similar antibody products from different vendors were competing for share. For example, two GAPDH antibodies were in the top 10, with one of these being a new entry from Proteintech. Cell Signaling Technology’s Anti-rabbit IgG HRP-linked Antibody led the list for another year.
There does also appear to be room for less established products to break through. Nearly ten new products entered the top 100 list this year.
Outside of the top 100, products which we may expect to see enter the top 100 in the future based on their current trajectories include:
- Beta Actin Recombinant antibody (81115-1-RR) from Proteintech – climbed 233 places from 391st to 158th.
- NRF2, NFE2L2 Polyclonal antibody (16396-1-AP) also from Proteintech – climbed 164 places from 368th to 204.
- HRP-conjugated Goat anti-Mouse IgG (H+L) (AS003) from ABclonal climbed from 359th to 187th.
Recombinant antibodies, secondary antibodies, imaging and cell signalling antibodies
Recombinant antibodies remain well cited in the top 100
Around a quarter of the top 100 antibodies of the past year were recombinant, a broadly stable figure over the past three years. All of these recombinant antibodies were monoclonal. The highest ranked recombinant secondary came in at position 174.
These products are well used, but yet to dominate over the long established polyclonal and monoclonal products researchers rely on in their work.
Secondary antibodies continue to grow in the top 100
This years’ analysis saw 38 secondary antibodies feature in the top 100 list – an increase on last year. These reagents continue to support researchers heavily in their work.
Imaging applications of research antibodies
The prevalence of antibody conjugates, such as Alexa Fluor conjugated antibodies and IRDye conjugated antibodies demonstrates the continuous use of imaging based applications (this year saw a new IRDye antibody from LICOR in the top 100). These products can also be applied to multiplexing by scientists – an area that has been seeing increasing interest in recent years.
Antibodies for cell signalling research
Finally, Phospho-AKT, MAPK and ERK targets remain research staples in the top 100, reflecting the continued focus on core cellular pathways. For example, in the top 10, two of these examples feature.
Wrap up
So, what does this data mean for antibody suppliers? Here’s three key takeaways from this year’s dataset:
- CST, Thermo Fisher, and Abcam remain leaders, but continued growth from ABclonal and Proteintech shows the market remains competitive.
- Citation jumps for antibodies demonstrate the potential impact of product strategy and marketing driving product use, as well as the need to identify up and coming research trends.
- Consistent demand for secondary antibodies and cell signalling reagents demonstrates the importance of supporting core research needs.
Below, you can download the top 100 antibody list in full for your own analysis by simply signing up.
If you’d like to find out more about how our Antibody Market data service can enable informed decisions to make and market better antibodies, reach out for a demo here.
You can find our previous top 100 product analyses covering the top 100 growth factors and the top 100 kits and assays here. Look out for our final two blogs of the series covering the top 100 bioactives and the top 100 cell lines.
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