Top life science assay kits analysis: 100 most cited products, 2025 update
10
Min Read
In this blog:
- Which kits are researchers citing the most in publications?
- Which companies are supporting researchers with widely used products?
- Download the complete top 100 life science assay kits dataset
At CiteAb, we use industry leading AI-driven tech to identify reagent use from the scientific literature. Companies use our life science market data to inform high-impact product and strategy decisions. Researchers use our search engine to find the right assay kits and other reagents.
In labs around the world, researchers are deciding which life science assay kit they should trust for their next breakthrough. These individual decisions, multiplied across millions of publications, tell a story about where science is heading.
Welcome to CiteAb’s annual ‘Top 100’ series, where we dive into life science citation data to better understand these decisions and the research landscape.
Today, we’re kicking off with the Top 100 most cited life science assay kits, encompassing ELISA kits, cell-based assay kits, protein quantitation kits, nucleic acid purification kits and much more. We will also be covering the top 100 antibodies, growth factors, cell lines and bioactive products this year.
Does your product feature in the list? Are there market opportunities to be discovered?
Read on to find out, and don’t forget to download the complete dataset for your own analysis at the bottom of this blog.
Life Science Assay Kit Market Overview
Our Kits and Assays database captures the use of over 1.1 million products supplied by approximately 400 vendors, covering more than 50 different kit categories.
For today’s analysis, we zoned in on which kits researchers have used (‘cited’) the most in publications in 2024. Here are the standout findings:
Trends in the Assay Kit Market – The Top 100 Dissected
Market Leaders and Rising Stars
To analyse the market landscape for life science assay kits, we first looked at the big players in this space – supplying kits that feature in the top 100 cited list.
The top five companies in 2025 by number of products in the list were:
- Thermo Scientific
- Beyotime Biotechnology
- New England Biolabs
- Promega
- MilliporeSigma
Their place in the top 100 goes to demonstrate strong support of researchers.
Market leader Thermo Scientific experienced a slight decrease in the number of products they held in the top 100 this year, although they still dominated with 27 products. This underscores the increasingly competitive nature of the life science tools market.
Overall, we noticed an increase in the number of companies making the top 100.
Lesser known Beyotime Biotechnology achieved remarkable expansion, adding 10 new kits to the Top 100 and securing second position. Similarly, New England Biolabs demonstrated strong momentum with 7 new entries.
Three companies entered the Top 100 for the first time in 2024:
- BioLegend: Zombie Aqua™ Fixable Viability Kit (#91)
- Roche: VENTANA® PD-L1 (SP263) Assay IVD (#55)
- ApexBio: Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) (#77)
Newcomers to the top 100 life science assay kits list goes to demonstrate that innovation continues to create opportunities for reagent companies, particularly when addressing market gaps or trending areas of research. You can see the data from our 2024 life science assay kits analysis here.
Andy Chalmers, CEO of CiteAb, commented:
‘It’s genuinely exciting to witness how companies are expanding their presence in the life science assay kits marketplace with products that help drive research breakthroughs. I am always interested in the breadth of kits being used and the interesting new assay kits that enter the market and start to generate citations. We’re eager to see how these trends continue to evolve.’
Life Science Assay Kits Shaping the Market
Drilling down into the products these companies supply, we uncovered some interesting trends in the top cited products.
Firstly, the most cited kit for 2024 remained the same, as it has for several years now: RNeasy Mini Kit by QIAGEN.
The most well cited kit types were Cell proliferation and viability kits, with 18 featuring in the top 100 in 2024.
Nucleic acid relation kits (purification, amplification, assembly/cloning) also proved popular overall.
Last year, we commented on the increase in ELISA kits in the top 100 (in 2023 4 ELISA kits featured and in 2024 6 kits featured). Perhaps unexpectedly, this trend has not continued into this year – we will be interested to see if this is a temporary blip or the start of a changing trend.
Life Science Assay Kits to Watch
Two products made significant leaps in citation counts to enter the Top 10:
- PowerUp™ SYBR™ Green Master Mix – Thermo Scientific
- Reactive Oxygen Species Assay Kit (jumped from position 35) – Beyotime Biotechnology
Overall, over 20 new kits entered the Top 100 this year, indicating a dynamic market landscape.
Emerging research focus areas
Interestingly, we observed increased adoption of sophisticated single-cell analysis tools. Two CellTrace™ kits from Thermo Scientific appeared in the Top 100 (up from one last year), and improved their rankings. These kits enable researchers to monitor generations of proliferating cells by dye dilution. New ‘Zombie’ dye kits (which stain dead cells) from BioLegend also entered the top 100.
Another area we noticed was metabolism and oxidative stress research kits. We saw multiple new entries into the top 100, including: GSH and GSSG Assay Kit, Lipid Peroxidation MDA Assay Kit and Enhanced mitochondrial membrane potential assay – all supporting discoveries in this area.
Wrap up
To sum up, the life science assay kits market looks to be dynamic, competitive and full of innovation. Our data reveals several suppliers to watch, as well as fields potentially rising in interest with researchers, and individual kits surging in popularity.
Ready to dive deeper into the data? Download the complete Top 100 list at the bottom of this post to conduct your own analysis and uncover specific opportunities for your portfolio.
In a competitive and uncertain market, quantitative insight into how researchers are using assay kits in experiments can be game-changing for strategic and product portfolio decisions. Get in touch for a demo of how our Market Data can be used.
Next week, we will be sharing our analysis of the top 100 growth factors, so stay tuned!
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