What are the Most Used Antibodies & Life Science Research Tools? – 2025 Summary
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- What are the most cited antibodies, growth factors, kits, bioactive small molecules, and cell lines of the past year?
- Discover the leading reagent vendors, research trends to watch, and products seeing increasing use
- Download data on the top 20 research reagents
At CiteAb, we use AI-powered data collection combined with expert human review to track reagent use in scientific publications. This helps us uncover emerging life science research trends and identify leading products and suppliers shaping the global reagent market.
This year’s analysis into the Top 100 Cited Research Reagents offers fresh insights into which products are driving discoveries and which companies are gaining ground in the competitive life science research tool landscape.
Below we summarise key findings across five reagent type markets analysed for the 2025 series. At the end of this blog, you’ll also find a link to download data on the top 20 more referenced antibodies, growth factors, cell lines, bioactive small molecules, and kits & assays in 2024 research publications.
Do your products feature? Are there products missing from your portfolio that could boost your growth?
What are the common trends across these five life science research markets?
When we compared our citation data for the top 100 antibodies, growth factors, bioactives, assay kits and cell lines, several cross-market trends became clear:
- Reagent markets continue to diversify. Nearly 50 different companies were represented in this year’s analysis, compared to just over 30 last year that featured.
- While established leaders such as Thermo Fisher Scientific, Abcam, and Cell Signaling Technology continue to perform strongly, new entrants and fast-growing suppliers are making notable progress.
- There’s clear evidence of product citation share changing year on year, with new products breaking into the top rankings. One antibody and bioactive small molecule product even entered the top 10, by citation count, this year.
Overall, the 2025 analysis shows that while trusted, long-established products continue to anchor research, innovation and competition are driving change across the life science reagent landscape.
2024 RUO Antibody Market Trends
- 12 companies featured in this year’s top 100 cited products.
- Abcam, Cell Signaling Technology, and Thermo Fisher Scientific continue to lead the top 100 with the most cited antibodies.
- ABclonal and Proteintech showed strong momentum, with Proteintech’s GAPDH antibody breaking into the top 10.
- Secondary antibodies, conjugated antibodies, and antibodies for cell signalling research remain among the most frequently cited, and growing, antibody types.
- Recombinant antibodies comprise around a quarter of the list.
2024 Life Science Assay Kit Market Trends
- The number of companies represented in the top 100 grew again this year, signalling intensifying competition.
- BioLegend, Roche, and Apex Bio entered the top 100 for the first time.
- Cell proliferation and viability kits continue to dominate by citation count.
- Flow cytometry and metabolism-related kits grew in citation counts, highlighting they may be areas to watch.
2024 Cytokines and Growth Factors Market Trends
- The number of companies represented the the top 100 more than doubled compared to last year, reflecting growing competition in the market.
- MilliporeSigma, R&D Systems and Thermo Scientific led the top 100 list.
- Wnt products and tagged growth factors stood out as trending product types.
2024 Bioactive Small Molecules Market Trends
- 13 companies featured in the top 100 – another sign of expanding competition.
- Bioactive cocktails remain popular with researchers.
- MedChemExpress and Beyotime Biotechnology stood out as two companies gaining traction in this space.
2024 Cell Line Market Trends
- HEK293T retained its position as the most cited cell line, with citation share continuing to rise.
- The BHK-21 clone 13 (baby hamster kidney, commonly used across virus replication studies) saw a notable surge into the top 20.
- Neuroscience and immunology models – such as HMC3 and THP-1 -showed increasing adoption by researchers.
How We Collect Citation Data
At CiteAb, we combine AI-driven literature mining with scientific expert review to identify which reagents are most frequently cited in academic publications. This provides a uniquely comprehensive view of global life science product usage and market trends.
Teams use this data to target marketing & sales campaigns by product type, institution, KOL and more with precision, spot upcoming market opportunities, and guide high-risk product development decisions. Get in touch with the team for a demo of how our market data can be analysed to inform strategic decisions.
Wrap Up and Data Download
We hope you’ve enjoyed our 2025 Top 100 Cited Research Reagents summary. These findings help illuminate not only which products researchers trust most, but also where market opportunities are emerging.
Download the dataset below: Access data on the top 20 reagents in each category to explore trends across antibodies, assay kits, cytokines and growth factors, bioactive small molecules, and cell lines.
If you’d like to learn more about our data offerings, get in touch with our team at hello@citeab.com.
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