Which ELISA kit companies are growing their market share?

By Lucy Gibson

December 6, 2023

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Which ELISA test manufacturers are growing their share in the life science kits market? 

Today, we delve into our kits & assays database to uncover those suppliers to watch.

We will be covering data on ELISA test vendors such as R&D Systems, Abcam and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as drilling down into the growth trends for three suppliers who have caught our eye with their dramatically rising share: BioLegend, Elabscience and Cusabio.

How did BioLegend and Elabscience break into the top 10? What did Cusabio’s trajectory into the top 5 look like? And what may we expect to see in the ELISA test market in the near future? 

What data is this ELISA kit analysis based on?

Our life science kits & assays database comprises over 50 different kit types, including cell-based assays, protein assays and, of course, ELISA kits. The data we collect on ELISA kits covers highly cited and popular kits such as IL-6 ELISA kits, TNF alpha ELISA kits, IFN gamma ELISA kits, as well as multiplex ELISA kits and much more. 

For this particular analysis, we drew on ten years worth of data. The database captures over 760k ELISA kits for 142 suppliers from across the globe. 

By collecting product citations for ELISA tests, we are able to unpick trends in the life science tools research market, understanding past research use and gaining insight into future purchasing decisions.  

An overview of the market leaders

The ELISA kit market is a growing and dynamic sector seeing a consistent increase in citations, equating to product use, over the past ten years. This is certainly a market to pay attention to, not going anywhere anytime soon. 

Throughout these past ten years, R&D Systems, part of Bio-Techne, have maintained a clear market lead. Although we have observed a declining share trajectory during this time, they continue to have a dominant hold on the market with a 25% share. 

Claiming the second spot in the market is Abcam, where they have been placed since 2018. They have seen impressive growth over the past ten years to claim this spot. We will be interested to see if they manage to continue with this growth, and make further gains on the market leader.

Thermo Fisher Scientific holds the third spot in the ELISA kit market, a position it has also had since 2018. 

Outside of these top three market leaders, we have seen other suppliers with striking growth trajectories over the years, resulting in them breaking into the top 10 or top 5. Interestingly, we found that many of these suppliers have a strong presence in China, a market where ELISA kits are seeing a notable uptick in use. 

So, which suppliers should you be watching in this space? 

BioLegend – gradual growth to break into the top 5

BioLegend ranks as the fifth most cited supplier in 2022, a significant increase from their rank of 17th in 2013. We noticed impressive growth particularly between the years 2015-2016 and 2019-2021 for this supplier.

Over on our blog, we have commented on BioLegend’s success beyond ELISA kits. In our recent antibody supplier market share analysis, we found that they had been seeing growth over many years to now claim 6th position by market share. Their success across multiple reagent markets lends compelling data to support their acquisition by Perkin Elmer for the large sum of $5.25 bn.

Elabscience – consistent and considerable growth

Increasing their market share year on year has resulted in Elabscience rising from 42nd position in 2015 to 6th in 2022. They specialise in immunodiagnostic technology for the life science community, and first entered the market in 2011 with ELISA kits. 

We spotted their growth in this market back in 2019, awarding them the ELISA Kit Supplier To Watch Award in the CiteAb Awards, which recognises a supplier showing the largest percentage increase in citations in the previous year.  This growth may be in part due to their success in China; most of their citations as of 2021 were in China.

We will be interested to see if they can continue with this trajectory and break into the top five in the future. 

Cusabio – Steady growth over many years

Cusabio broke into the top five in 2019 and has maintained their position since. Their steady growth over the years has meant they rose to this position from 9th in 2013.

They now supply thousands of ELISA kits around the globe across many research fields. Their most cited ELISA kit in the CiteAb kits & assays search engine is their Rat TNF-α ELISA kit. Interestingly, as of 2022 almost 60% of Cusabio’s ELISA kit citations were from China and the supplier ranks third in the Chinese ELISA kit market. This seems to be a contributing factor to their growth in global rank.

We will be watching to see if they can maintain this steady growth and break into the top three in the future.

Wrap-up

Will this dynamic market sees further considerable changes in rank in the future? We will be interested to see whether the suppliers we’ve focused on in this blog are able to continue their trajectories and gain on the top three market leaders.

A trend we noticed emerging from this data was the impact the Chinese market. This ELISA kit market has been growing year on year, taking share from the US market to now claim a quarter of the total global citations. Increasing share here may be important for future success with ELISA kit products. We will be returning to explore this country specific data in more detail on our blog next year, so do keep an eye out. 

Download data on leading ELISA test companies

Looking to carry out your own analysis? You can download our data covering the top 10 ELISA kit suppliers for 2022, with their rank and market share.

If you want to expand your analysis, do reach out to the team who are always happy to chat all things data.

We have recently introduced an ELISA kit market insights pack, which includes quarterly data deliveries covering supplier, country share and more, helping to inform product pipeline, strategy and marketing decisions.

This is the final supplier share series blog, joining our recent blogs covering the growth factor market and the research antibody market, which you can check out over on our blog.

Is there a reagent type you’d like us to cover in the future? Do let us know!

• Lucy and the CiteAb team