What were the most used life science research Kits & Assays of 2022?

5

Min Read

In this blog:

  • Discover which reagent companies supplied the most used kits of 2022
  • See which types of kits are highly cited in the scientific literature
  • Download data on the top 100 life science research kits of last year

Citations give reliable insight into market performance by reflecting past sales and giving a leading indicator of trends in life science research. 

So, today we are excited to delve into our data on the top 100 most cited kits of the past year and explore the trends in this market. Our kits data covers a huge range of kit types, from ELISA kits, to Multiplex Immunoassay kits, Enzyme detection and activity kits and much more.

You can read our most recent analysis of the top 100 cited life science assay kits in 2023 here.

We also give you the chance to download the data on the top 100 kits of 2022 at the bottom of this blog. 

Remember to take a look at our other recently released top 100 product blogs: 

What life science market data did we use in this analysis?

Our kits and assays dataset covers ~800,000  kits, from over 300 suppliers, with over 440,000 citations. This currently covers 95% of the human proteome, and over 47k targets. 

Over the last few years, we have been working hard to build and improve this dataset.

We now hold data on fifty different kit types, including: ELISA kits, Multiplex Immunoassay kits, Conjugation/Labelling kits, Detection/staining kits, Enzyme detection and activity kits, Nucleic acid extraction and cloning kits and much more.

This data comes from open-access, pre-prints and subscription only journals, due to partnerships with a number of publishers. 

So, what did we uncover from looking at this data?

Supplier diversity within the top 100 kits dataset

The number of suppliers with a product in the top 100 has increased since we last carried out analysis on the top 100 kits.


The top 100 kits for 2022 consisted of 19 different life science companies, showing it to be a competitive space. If we compare this to our top 100 analysis of the growth factor, bioactive product and antibody markets, the kits dataset featured the most suppliers.

Pie chart to show the suppliers which feature in the top 100 kits data, and the number of products they have in this list.
Pie chart to show the suppliers which feature in the top 100 kits data, and the number of products they have in this list.

Who were the leading kits suppliers?

The reagent supplier providing the most well cited products in the top 100 list was Thermo Fisher Scientific. They supplied 30 of the top 100 most used kits, with their strength lying in nucleic acid related kits and cell proliferation and viability kits.

Joining Thermo Fisher Scientific in the top three were Beyotime Biotechnology and New England Biolabs, overtaking Promega and MilliporeSigma who now rank as the fourth and fifth most featured suppliers respectively.

Beyotime Biotechnology and New England Biolabs growth in this market is not an isolated phenomena – we have noticed these two suppliers making moves in other reagent markets. 

Beyotime Biotechnology entered the top 100 antibody dataset for the first time this year, which we recently reported on, and New England Biolabs have shown considerable growth in the protein market in recent years which we analysed further in our blog on both the cancer research market and immunology market.

We will be interested to continue monitoring the trends in market share for these two suppliers, to see whether they maintain their positive growth trajectories across multiple markets. 

The remaining suppliers in the top 100 list include some of the life science industry’s big hitters, such as: Abcam, Cell Signaling Technology, R&D Systems, Dako, Vector Laboratories and Lonza. Download the full dataset at the bottom of this blog to see which products they had included in the top 100.

Which life science kits companies are growing?

Delving deeper into the rankings, our data revealed a few suppliers which may be ones to watch in the future. 

Nanjing Jiancheng Bioengineering Institute have added a second kit to the top 100, as well as increasing the citation share of a separate product they supply in the top 100.  Their Total superoxide dismutase (SOD) assay kit (WST-1 method) (A001-3-2) Enzyme detection and activity kit entered the rankings for the first time this year, and their Malondialdehyde (MDA) assay kits (TBA method) (A003-1-2) Metabolism kit has risen 8 places, to now feature as the 76th most cited kit of last year. 

Similarly, MedChemExpress has seen a significant increase in citation count for their Cell Counting Kit-8 (HY-KO301) cell proliferation and viability kit, which has risen from the 95th most cited kit in 2021 to the 58th most used in 2022. In our previous blog covering the top 100 bioactive products, MedChemExpress ranked highly as the fourth most featured supplier, having grown their share significantly in China – they may be ones to watch across multiple reagent markets. 

Which type of life science research kits are most well used?

In the top 100 most popular kits of 2022 list, 20 different kits types featured. We found that over half of the products were nucleic acid related kit types. 

We were interested to see that only four ELISA kits featured, a slight decrease from the six ELISA kits in our 2021 analysis. The most cited ELISA kit of last year was the Ultra Sensitive Mouse Insulin ELISA Kit (Cat# 90080) from Crystal Chem. 

We’ve noted a growing research interest in multiplex immunoassay kits over the past few years, reflected in the burgeoning size and competition in the market. In the top 100, we found one multiplex immunoassay from New England Biolabs featuring at number 62.

The top five most used kits were the same as when we last analysed the top 100 kits.

We found Qiagen supplied the most cited kit product for 2022. Their RNeasy Mini Kit (Code 74104) has maintained its leading position in the kits dataset from our previous analysis on the market, with over 83,000 citations in our kits search engine.

We noticed that Takara Bio’s PrimeScript RT Reagent Kit with gDNA Eraser (Code RR047A) rose from 5th to 3rd position, demonstrating increasing use in the scientific literature. 

We also found that Dojindo Molecular Technologies made their way into the top 10 kits for the first time with their Cell Counting Kit-8 (Code CK04).

Top five kits in the top 100, details of their supplier, kit type and the total citations we have collected which are displayed in our kits search engine.
Top five kits in the top 100, with details of their supplier, kit type and the total citations we have collected and are displayed in our kits search engine.

For the purposes of this blog, we wanted to provide a broad overview of the kits market. However for individual projects we often focus our analysis and data on specific kits types, to cover particular markets of interest. 

Download the data

Below, you can download data covering the top 100 kits and their suppliers to perform your own analysis on.

Do get in touch with the team to discuss the complete kits dataset, or a section of interest of the kits dataset, in more detail!

Remember to keep your eye on our blog and sign up to our newsletter below to hear about more market data analysis that we share.

We will also be releasing a summary of the top 100 blogs soon, wrapping up common trends across five reagent markets – so do look out for this!

  • Rhys and the CiteAb team

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