Neuroscience Trends: Top 10 Antibody Targets Driving Research
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- Which are the most cited antibody targets in neuroscience?
- Where is there growing interest from researchers?
- Download data on the top 10 neuroscience antibody protein targets
As the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting approaches, we explore our citation data to uncover the most-cited antibody protein targets, as well as the most underserved, driving neuroscience research today.
CiteAb’s data captures reagent use from millions of scientific papers, showing real-world product usage by researchers across the globe.
Discover:
- Which targets are gaining traction – gain insights into trends that can guide product development and marketing priorities.
- Where demand is highest – analysis highlights top targets for commercial focus.
- How your antibody portfolio compares – download data to compare to your portfolio and identify gaps.
Neuroscience Research Market Overview
Neuroscience research remains one of the largest reagent markets, with some reports valuing it at over $600 million [1]. Overall, CiteAb primary antibody data shows:
- Over 217 suppliers and 60k antibody products cited in neuroscience publications
- Over 350k citations for antibody products in neuroscience research.
For the below analysis, we focused on citations from 2020-2024, covering over 8000 targets and 159k citations.
Trending Neuroscience Targets: What are neuroscience researchers studying?
Drilling down into CiteAb citation data, we discovered a number of key trends. Below, we provide a quick dive into what we can learn from the top 10 neuroscience targets.
- Glial fibrillary acidic protein comes out on top as the most cited protein target by neuroscience researchers. Unsurprisingly, there were also 170 cited antibody products against this popular target.
- The third most cited target in 2024 was Microtubule-associated protein tau. This target also had the most antibody products available against it, with 265 from 35 suppliers. This is perhaps unsurprising given its significance to Alzheimer’s Disease and other Tauopathies.
- A target in the top 10 that we spotted to be showing a strong increase in citation share was RNA binding protein fox-1 homolog 3. This target is associated with epilepsy. [2]
- The target Allograft inflammatory factor 1, ranked as the 6th most cited in 2024, also showed accelerating growth – although this growth looks to be plateauing slightly. This target is upregulated in many brain diseases and brain injury. [1]
- The most underserved target in the top 10 was Mouse RNA binding protein fox-1 homolog 3 – it has just 24 cited antibodies from 6 suppliers. It is worth noting, however, that this target did have a flat to declining citation share trend over the last 5 years.
Each of these trends represents a potential area for suppliers to review portfolio coverage or strengthen marketing presence.
Bonus Insights: Where Neuroscience Demand Is Growing Fastest, by Institution
Last year ahead of SfN, the team analysed institutions citing the most neuroscience reagents in publications.
An understanding of where (institutions) and what (targets) researchers are studying helps focus marketing and collaboration strategies where reagent use is highest.
Here’s some key takeaways from that analysis, and where you can find more information:
- Asian institutions dominated the top 10 by citation output, with several top universities (e.g., Zhejiang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University) featuring.
- The US remains a powerhouse – with Harvard University in the top 10 and 5 institutions in total in the top 20.
- Two European institutions made the top 20: University College London and Universitat Wurzburg.
Discover the full neuroscience institution analysis here.
Free Neuroscience Data Download
Download the free dataset covering the Top 10 Neuroscience Antibody Protein Targets in 2024 below for your own analysis.
Harnessing citation data replaces guesswork with evidence – ensuring product and marketing decisions are backed by real-world usage patterns, not intuition.
You can set up a meeting with the team at SfN here to chat all things data, or reach out to request more information and a demo.
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References:
- https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/health-care/global-neuroscience-market-investment-report.html
- https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=AIF1
- https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=RBFOX3
