Leading Bioactive Small Molecules: Top 100 cited products, 2024 update

5

Min Read

In this blog:

  • Which types of bioactive small molecules are highly cited?
  • Which suppliers are providing the most popular biochemicals in this market, supporting researchers in their work?
  • Who should you be watching in the bioactive small molecule space?

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 bioactive small molecule market dataset covers over 97k products from 100+ companies, and includes biologically active inhibitors and activators drawn from our biochemicals database.

Today, we’re analysing data on the top 100 cited small molecule products from 2023, finding:

  • 10 different reagent companies featuring, with MilliporeSigma leading
  • 21 cocktails appearing, with a protease inhibitor cocktail as the top cited product 
  • MedChemExpress and Thermo Fisher Scientific as companies to watch, having increased the number of products in the dataset

You can also download the complete bioactive market dataset at the bottom of this blog: 

Top 100 bioactive small molecules data analysis summarised

Which are the leading bioactive small molecule companies? 

By understanding which companies are supplying the most cited bioactive products, you can benchmark your performance and inform market research projects.

Overall 10 different reagent companies featured in the top 100 cited bioactive list for 2023, showing support for researchers in this space. This is an increase from analysis into the top 100 bioactive products in 2022.

Interestingly, we saw a real spread in the number of products these life science product vendors supplied in the top 100. 

Taking the lead, MilliporeSigma supplied 62 of the top cited bioactive small molecules.

Ranking as the second most prominent supplier in the dataset, Selleck Chemicals supplied 11 products.

A new company to enter the top 100 was Thermo Fisher Scientific, who now rank as the third most cited supplier. Joining them in joint third were MedChemExpress.

A pie chart to show the most cited bioactive small molecule vendors in the top 100

Drilling down more specifically into the top 10 cited bioactive products, we found that MilliporeSigma supplied the majority. Thermo Fisher Scientific also supplied one small molecule in the top 10; their Puromycin Dihydrochloride product came in as fourth most cited.


Bioactive small molecule suppliers to watch

We saw a number of new suppliers enter the top 100 bioactive small molecule list in 2023, including Bimake, Stemcell technologies and Takara bio and BD biosciences.

One supplier that particular caught our eye with their increasing share of the top 100 cited bioactive product dataset was MedChemExpress

They supplied nine of the top 100 cited bioactive products, with their highest cited product just outside the top 20. Of note, we have previously commented on their success in the Chinese Bioactive market, which may have supported their strong performance here. 

Impressively, Thermo Fisher Scientific entered the top 100 in 2023 to rank in joint third position with nine products, as previously mentioned. Their inhibitor cocktail products were popular choices amongst scientists in published work.


Highly cited bioactive small molecules 

Gaining insight into reagent trends within markets of interest can direct product development programmes and give useful marketing content.

In the top 100 cited bioactive small molecule list, the most cited product was a Protease Inhibitor Cocktail from MilliporeSigma. This bioactive molecule received over 600 citations in 2023. 

In fact, five cocktails appeared in the top 10. Overall, 21 products in the top 100 were cocktails. 

Cocktails featuring had a range of uses; from popular protease inhibitor cocktails, to phosphatase inhibitors, protein transport inhibitor cocktails and cell stimulation cocktails.

A pie chart to show the number of bioactive cocktails in the top 100

If you’re interested in seeing the full breakdown of cocktail citations in the biochemicals data, get in touch with the team. 

Other popular product types in the top ten included Tamoxifen, Puromycin Dihydrochlorade, and Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate.

Puromycin Dihydrochlorade is a protein synthesis inhibitor, and appeared twice in the top 10.

Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (protein kinase C activator) ranked as the most cited product in 2022, and tamoxifen (a selective estrogen response modifier) also appeared in the top 10 in our previous analysis.

Similarly to our previous analysis, cancer related bioactive small molecules featured in the top 100 cited list. This year these included chemotherapy drugs such as 5-fluorouracil and Olaparib (AZD2281) [1].

In fact, cancer research is one of the top three most popular research areas that bioactive small molecule products are used in – you can get a full breakdown of research area data with our Market Insights package.


Wrap-up: The bioactive data used in this analysis and downloading the top 100.

At CiteAb, we collect and curate product information from the scientific literature using a combination of text-mining tech and human reviewing. This citation data allows us to understand research use. 

For this analysis, we drilled down into our biochemicals database to generate the top 100 bioactive small molecule market dataset. 

You can freely download details on the top 100 products, their rank, and the reagent company who supplied them below. 

If you’re interested in using our biochemical 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. 

To catch up on our previous top 100 analyses, follow the links below:

And finally, do stay tuned for our final top 100 analysis, diving into the cell line market!

Rebecca and the CiteAb team

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References

  1. https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.TPS4607
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