Exciting new data area to explore through CiteAb
Those of you who have known CiteAb from the beginning will be aware that we originally only collated citations for antibody use, and expanded this in 2017 to include other reagent types including chemical probes and lipids. In an exciting move we’re now expanding our data collection again, and for the first time we’re looking at citations for instruments used in research papers.
To begin our work in this area we’re focusing on the use of flow cytometers, and our team at CiteAb has been analysing the data we’ve collected to see what patterns are emerging in the flow cytometer market.
Product manager Rebecca Sadler said: “Flow cytometry is one of the most well-known technologies used in multiple research areas for cell analysis, characterisation, counting and sorting.
“These instruments have been continually improving, for example, in the number of parameters that can be measured simultaneously. One of the older instruments, the BD FACSCalibur, is able to detect three fluorescent parameters, while the newer BD LSRFortessa X-20 can detect up to 20 simultaneous parameters.
“These improvements are important in many research areas, such as in stem cell research, where determining differentiation of these cells and monitoring expression patterns of genes and proteins is very important.”
The CiteAb team has now collected over 92,000 citations for 50 flow cytometers from 13 different countries. They have used a similar method to that used to collect citations for reagents, which means there is data on individual citations for multiple instruments and the dataset gives a really good picture of the global flow cytometer market.
Rebecca adds: “BD Bioscience is a clear leader in this market – this company provides 21 of the 50 total flow cytometers cited, and claims a large majority of the total share of citations.
“However, we can see from our data that gradually over the last ten years other suppliers have started to take market share from BD Bioscience. Beckman Coulter has almost tripled its market share in that time, while Millipore has also made significant gains. We’re also seeing smaller suppliers like Invitrogen, Miltenyi and Sony Biotechnology beginning to compete.”
We’re going to be producing further blogs in the future focused on specific flow cytometers, so watch this space. Our team is also keen to look at citation data for other instruments, so if there is an area you’re particularly keen they focus on please do get in touch and let us know.
– Matt and the CiteAb team
