Top 100 Cited Bioactive Research tools, 2025 update
5
Min Read
In this blog:
- Which companies are supplying highly cited bioactive products?
- Which bioactive small molecules are proving popular in research?
- Download the top 100 bioactive dataset for yourself at the bottom of this blog!
At CiteAb, we use industry leading tech to understand product use in publications. Our citation database provides a our data services, providing an understanding of research trends, and a search engine for scientists. Learn more here.
Welcome to the fourth ‘Top 100 Cited Life Science Product’ analyses of 2025. Today we’re focusing on popular bioactive products in research, taking in cocktails, inhibitors, activators, antibiotics and more.
What are the market gaps and opportunities? How are your products performing? What research trends stuck out?
We answer these questions and more below. Remember you can also download the full top 100 bioactive list for your own analysis at the bottom of this blog.
Bioactive market overview
Our bioactive database covers over 174 suppliers, who together supply over 118k products which have been cited over a quarter of a million times in life science publications.
This year, our citation database showed the most referenced bioactive products were relatively consistent with last year’s analyses. We also saw 8 new products enter the top 100, and more companies featured – demonstrating increasing competition.
Bioactive Small Molecule Market Leaders
13 companies supplied products with enough citations to make the top 100 list. This is an increase of three companies since last year’s analysis.
The growth in the number of suppliers for the last few years goes to show competition in the market is not letting up.
Leading the top 100 bioactive report was MilliporeSigma with over half of the most cited bioactive products. In fact, MilliporeSigma products make up 8 of the top 10.
Selleck Chemicals also showed impressive support of researchers in this space, with 12 of the top 100 products. Completing the top five were MedChemExpress, Thermo Scientific and Tocris.
Bioactive small molecule companies to watch
In the top 100, a number of bioactive suppliers showed impressive growth.
- MedChemExpress have continued to increase their share, adding two products to the top 100 list to bring their total to 11 and move into third position
- Beyotime Biotechnology feature with 3 products in the top 100
These companies have strong branches or headquarters, respectively, in China – a region in which we have seen increasing growth for companies and research output.
Andrew Chalmers, CiteAb CEO, commented
‘The rise in the number of suppliers with products in the top 100 reflects the pace of innovation and competition in the bioactive small molecule space. Seeing the well established top five continue to support researchers at scale, alongside the growth of players such as MedChemExpress and Beyotime Biotechnology, underscores that this is an exciting time for discovery.”
Bioactive products shaping the market
Overall, there was a mix of specialised inhibitors and more general-use cocktails, demonstrating diverse research needs in this space.
Cocktail products continued to dominate the top 100 list, with a similar number featuring to last year’s analysis: 20 of the top 100 products.
The most cited bioactive cocktail product was a (P8340) protease inhibitor cocktail from MilliporeSigma. In fact, protease inhibitors were very popular products, with a new entrant into the top 10: the Halt™ Protease and Phosphatase Inhibitor Cocktail (100X) from Thermo Scientific. The most cited compound inhibitor was Tamoxifen, from MilliporeSigma.
We noticed that ferroptosis and autophagy research tools appeared in the top 100, with inhibitors such as ferrostatin-1 and 3-methyladenine higher up the list. Cell culture additives also proved popular, unsurprisingly.
New entrants included BD GolgiStop from BD Biosciences and several Protease/Phosphatase Inhibitor Cocktails. Overall we saw 8 new bioactive products enter the top 100.
Wrap-up
Overall, we found that the bioactive space remained competitive, with 13 companies supplying top cited products. Cocktails continued in popular, and quality, well-established research tools remained essential for scientists’ work.
You can download the complete top 100 bioactive list at the bottom of this blog for your own analysis.
Suppliers use these insights to guide successful catalogue management and support marketing claims. Reach out for a demo of our life science data to see how!
Finally, you can catch up on previous top 100 analyses on our blog below:
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