CiteAb’s 2023 wrapped.
10
Min Read
In this blog:
- We look back on the past year
- We give an overview of the product updates, team news and big events that occurred
- We wish you a very happy holidays!
This year we’ve welcomed in new team members, data products, search engine improvements and much more!
Whilst we’ve grown, our central mission remains the same: we believe that the reagent data we collect can help accelerate science in a multitude of ways.
Over the course of 2023, we’ve worked hard to keep expanding our data, improving our services and getting involved in events that help to drive progress in the life sciences.
So, here’s a rundown of what our 2023 has looked like:
CiteAb reagent data – improvements, new products, partnerships and more
Powering our data services and search platform is our citation reagent database – the heart of CiteAb.
Over the course of the year, our product and development team have been working hard to grow and improve this life science database. It now includes:
- >14m reagents, across research antibodies, biochemicals, proteins, kits & assays and cell lines & models (that’s ~200 added an hour this year!)
- >6 million citations
- >600 companies
We’re excited to keep improving and expanding this database in 2024 to better help the research reagent community!
The CiteAb Citation Widget
As we have been growing our reagent database we’ve been thinking about the best ways to deliver this data to our partners, which led to us redeveloping our citation plug-in tool.
This was a really exciting project to watch come to fruition, and we’ve loved seeing it on multiple supplier pages already, displaying product citations and images. You can watch our recent webinar on the citation widget here.
Springer Nature including reagent data in their Experiments Platform
Aside from using our reagent database to provide data services for reagent vendors and power our search engine for researchers, we’ve also begun working with publishers.
Our text mining tech means we are able to extract valuable data from their full text, closed-access content, improving our reagent database. We also provide this data back to them.
Our partnership with Springer Nature took and exciting new step in 2023. Now, reagent data we collect and curate from selected publications is being shown on their Experiments platform, to better help researchers planning their experiments.
You can read more about this new step in our partnership here.
Life science market data analysis
We have, of course, been sharing some of the most interesting takeaways from our data over on our blog.
We finished the year with our much anticipated top 100 product series, where we looked at the most cited reagents across different markets in the previous year. This analysis reveals some fascinating insight into research trends and life science companies to watch.
You can see our summary of the analysis here.
We are always keen to hear from our readers about what they’d like to see on our blog, so do get in touch if there’s a particular market that’s of interest to you that you want to learn more about next year!
The CiteAb reagent search engine – celebrating ten years.
This March we celebrated a big milestone: ten years of the CiteAb reagent search engine.
To mark the occasion, we spoke to users of the search engine to find out how CiteAb has helped their work and learn more about some really fantastic research and initiatives.
Here’s the series so far:
- Dosh Whye: Assistant director of the Human Neuron Core at Boston Children’s Hospital, who uses CiteAb to identify the most validated antibodies in stem cell biology and neuroscience.
- Andrea Radtke: Associate Scientist at the NIAID/NIH with a focus on microscopy techniques, where she uses CiteAb to find the best antibody candidates for multiplexed tissue imaging studies.
- Harvinder Virk: Co-lead of the Only Good Antibodies Community and Forum and NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, who has used the CiteAb search engine to identify where antibodies have been used in the literature, feeding into validation studies.
We have also been introducing features to CiteAb to try and better support researchers who use our tool.
This year, we added links to ACT environmental impact labels on the search engine. This means researchers can easily see sustainability information for participating suppliers on our product pages, and make more informed purchasing decisions.
Let us know if there’s any resources or information you’d like to see on the search engine that would help with your work!
And, remember to tell your colleagues about CiteAb if you like using it!
The 4th International Antibody Validation meeting
This September, we organised the International Antibody Validation Meeting in Bath, UK. The event drew 100 delegates from around the globe to discuss antibody validation and help drive improvements in this field.
Bringing together three key industries – academia, biotech/biopharma and antibody companies – meant we were able to generate really productive discussion, which we feel is an essential way to drive change.
Some of the central themes that emerged from the meeting included the issue of education and awareness, how we can best share data and collaborate cross-industry and the five guidelines for antibody validation (or ‘pillars’) and how they may best be utilised.
You can view a selection of talks from the meeting here.
We’d also like to thank our sponsors again – their support and engagement in this event makes it possible to run, and is really important to advance best practice in antibody validation.
The 2023 Antibody Validation Meeting Sponsors were:
- Abcam
- The Antibody Society
- Bio-Techne
- Bethyl Laboratories
- CancerTools.org
- Cell Signaling Technology
- DSHB
- GeneTex
- Miltenyi Biotec
- Proteintech
- ProSci
- Thermo Fisher Scientific
You can also read our blog giving an overview of the five pillars of antibody validation here, for a recap or place to start in this important field.
The CiteAb Awards – celebrating the research reagent industry
We loved running the 2023 CiteAb Awards this year, where we celebrated the successes of 15 different companies across the research reagent sector.
Our 2023 Awards ranged from Researchers’ Choice, to Image of the Year, to ELISA Kit Supplier to Watch in 2023, Antibody Supplier of the Year and Supplier Succeeding in Infectious Disease Research.
The CiteAb team visited Orlando, Florida, to attend AACR and present the winners with their award trophies and certificates.
We’re so pleased that the CiteAb Awards will be returning for their tenth year in 2024!
Mark the 4th January in your calendars, and check back on our awards website to find out more about the categories when they launch.
Team news
Queen’s Award for Innovation
Earlier this year, we received our Queen’s Award for Innovation from the Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset and his Deputy.
The Queen’s Award (now renamed the King’s Award) is the most prestigious business award in the UK, celebrating industry leading companies who have created or developed an innovative product or service. We won this award in 2022, so it was a really special moment to officially receive it at our office in Bath!
New team members
It’s been fantastic to welcome a new addition to the CiteAb team this year: Joe! Joe joined the development team this September. His enthusiasm and prior experience in web development and machine learning makes him the perfect addition to the team.
Whilst we welcomed new team members, we also said goodbye to a key team member who has been with us for many years. Our Head of Citations, Alicia, moved on this year; we are grateful for her efforts and enthusiasm over the years and wish her all the best on her new adventures!
Thanks to all of our partners and researchers who use our platform!
We’d like to end this final blog of the year by thanking everyone who has worked with us and made 2023 a great year.
The CiteAb offices will reopen on the 3rd January. We hope everyone has a restful and enjoyable holidays, and see you in 2024!
- Skye and the CiteAb team