Shining the spotlight on some popular antibody targets
Over the past 12 months our team has been working to grow our antibody target trends data – a unique dataset which helps suppliers plan their pipelines and develop products that are increasing in demand in research labs.
Product manager Rhys Williams has been leading on this work, and we catch up with him today to find out what has changed since we last took a look at this dataset.
Rhys says: “We have grown this dataset to over 10,000 antibody targets, giving an unparalleled overview of the market. Today we’re going to look specifically at two targets which are increasing in popularity in either Western Blotting or in Flow Cytometry, to show how this dataset helps show market trends and can inform pipeline decision making.”
The first target we’re taking a look at today is Vimentin (Homo sapiens) – a class-III intermediate filament protein which is expressed in non-epithelial cells, particularly in mesenchymal cells where it is the major constituent of the cytoskeleton. It’s function is in maintaining cellular integrity as well as to provide resistance against stress.
Rhys explains: “Vimentin is often used as a marker for mesenchymal cells as well as a marker for epithelial-mesenchymal transition. It is also over-expressed in a number of epithelial cancers, and is now considered to be a prerequisite for metastasis in numerous human cancers. This has led to an increase in it’s research for cancer therapy.”
As a result, our data shows that approximately 60 per cent of the citations for antibodies against human Vimentin in 2018 are in the cancer research field. We can also see that the citation share for human Vimentin in Western Blotting experiments has increased from being the 200th most cited Western Blotting target in 2010 to the 27th in 2018.
Rhys says: “The huge growth in the use of anti-human Vimentin antibodies over the past nine years means this really is a must-have target to be covered in any cancer research catalogue.”
Another high-growth target is Integrin alpha-M (Homo sapiens), this time for Flow Cytometry. Integrin alpha-M, also known as CD11b, is a protein subunit of the heterodimeric molecule Integrin Mac-1 (αMβ2).
Rhys explains: “Mac-1 is a very abundant receptor expressed on monocytes and macrophages. It is involved in a range of leukocyte responses, such as adhesion, degranulation, phagocytosis, migration, and more. Antibodies against Mac-1 are often used in Flow Cytometry due to the cell surface marker’s bimodal distributions (positive or negative expression), which therefore allows for the determination of distinct immune cell types.”
Looking at the data we can see that since 2010 there has been and increase in the use of antibodies against Integrin alpha-M (CD11b) in Flow Cytometry experiments. The target has increased from being the 23rd most cited Flow Cytometry target in 2010 to the 10th in 2018.
Rhys adds: “We can also see from the data that currently only around 25 per cent of the suppliers listed on CiteAb offer a conjugated antibody against human Integrin alpha-M. This suggests that there are a significant number of suppliers that could benefit from including such an antibody in their catalogues.”
Today we are giving away the citation share trend graphs for the two aforementioned antibody targets for free, if you sign up below. If you are interested in learning more about our full antibody target trends dataset, which contains trend data for over ten thousand targets, then please contact us.
– Rebecca and the CiteAb team
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