Leading Cell Lines: Top 100 cited products, 2024 update
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- Which types of cell lines are highly cited?
- Which cell lines are seeing increasing use in recent years?
- Download the top 100 dataset!
In our top 100 cited reagent series, we explore research trends in the antibody, growth factor, life science assay kit, cell line and bioactive small molecule markets by analysing product citation counts from the scientific literature.
The RUO cell line market includes more than 200k cell lines from commercial repositories.
Today, we delve into this data and analyse the top 100 cited research cell line types from 2023, finding:
- Five new cell lines enter the top 100 most cited list
- Highly cited Vero cell line market share changing
- HEK293 cell lines remain the market leaders
You can also download the complete cell line market dataset at the bottom of this blog!
Highly cited cell lines in life science research
Data on which cell lines researchers are using the most can help to inform your marketing, product development and market research.
Over the past year our data has revealed that the most popular product types in the immortalised cell line market have remained broadly consistent. At the same time, we found that some of the more popular cell lines have seen changes in citation share, impacting the rankings at the top.
Cell lines increasing in citation share
The most cited cell line by researchers in 2023 remains HEK293T. This cell line has seen impressive growth in citation share again this year, demonstrating that the HEK293T market remains an important one to pay attention to.
Ranking as the second most cited cell line in the top 100 list, the HeLa cell line was highly cited in the literature in 2023.
Interestingly, last year we commented on HeLa’s decrease in citation share. With this turnaround in trajectory, it has shown that in spite of fluctuations it is certainly a mainstay for research use overall.
Coming in as the third most cited cell line in 2023 was HEK293. This immortalised cell line also grew in popularity over the past year.
Cell lines decreasing in citation share
Looking now at cell line types that haven’t been seeing a positive growth trajectory, we found that Vero cell lines were less popular with researchers in 2023.
In our previous analysis into the most popular cell lines in 2022, we commented on Vero’s increasing citation count and speculated that this could be due to use in COVID-19 research.
However, in 2023 Vero dropped to fifth position in the top 100 cited list, and Vero C1008 to ninth place. Could we be seeing less Vero cell lines being used in research as a result of reduced focus on COVID?
New entries to the top 100
Overall, we saw five cell lines enter the top 100 list for the first time in 2023, demonstrating increasing use by researchers.
- HMC3
- Expi293F
- BTI-Tn-5B1-4
- FaDu
- Plat-E
Interestingly, the HMC3 cell line has steadily increased in citation share over the past five years. A microglial cell line, researchers use this cell line widely in neuroscience studies. It has grown from a share of 0.02% in 2017 to 0.3% in 2023.
Similarly, Plat-E saw a particularly large growth in share over the past year. This cell line is used in retroviral packaging.
Other immortalized cell lines we noticed further down the top 100 list that were increasing in market share included: THP-1, growing in use since 2021, and SHSY-5Y.
Which are the leading cell line companies?
Through understanding which companies are the big players, you can make more informed strategy decisions and benchmark performance.
Although this top 100 cell line analysis focuses on cell line types, not on specific products supplied by individual vendors, our data also allows us to take a step back and look at which cell line companies are the big players in the market.
Maintaining their strong hold in this space, ATCC dominated our top 100 cited cell line list with 85% of citations in 2023 for cell lines.
In fact, cell banks comprised the top three in the market. DSMZ, from Germany, ranked as second and ECACC, a European bank, in third.
Joining these companies in the top 10 included ThermoFisher, MilliporeSigma and Cytion, amongst others.
Wrap-up: The cell line data used in this analysis and downloading the top 100
Our expertise at CiteAb lies in product citations; we are able to identify and understand product use from the scientific literature. Using human reviewing to augment AI ensures our data is of the highest accuracy.
We have curated a comprehensive cell lines database, from which we were able to pull the top 100 cell lines of the past year to inform this analysis.
You can freely download details on the top 100 cell lines and their rank by filling out the form below.
If you’re interested in using our cell line data to inform your product pipeline decisions, target your sales and marketing or inform your business strategy, please do get in touch with the team.
You can catch up on our previous top 100 analyses below:
- Top 100 life science assay kits
- Top 100 Growth factors
- Top 100 RUO antibodies
- Top 100 bioactive small molecules
Finally, we will be sharing a blog summarising all of the analysis we’ve carried out for the top 100 series and highlighting some trends across the five markets. Subscribe to our mailing list below to be notified when this goes live!
- Rhys and the CiteAb team
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