Which are the market leading antibodies?

Today I am taking a fresh look at our antibody data to highlight which the top used antibodies of 2019 were. This analysis is based on hundreds of thousands of highly accurate 2019 academic citations for over 4.9 million antibodies, from suppliers around the world. 

Over the last year the team and I have worked hard to increase the number of citations we have for antibodies, and have also continued to enhance its quality making it the most reliable data available for insights in to this fast paced market. 

When we did this analysis last year, we saw a similar set of suppliers with at least one antibody in the top 100, however there has been a change in the distribution of citations. 

Cell Signaling Technology has maintained its top supplier position, but has climbed slightly and now claims over 40 per cent of the top 100 positions.

Abcam and MilliporeSigma were battling it out last year for second and third supplier with the most antibodies in the top 100, with MilliporeSigma just pipping Abcam with 19 and 15 antibodies in the top 100 respectively. Today we can see that Abcam has slipped past Millipore and is now in second position with 18 antibodies in the top 100, whereas MilliporeSigma now has 14. 

MilliporeSigma is still in a very strong position, but based on this data the company might look to Abcam to see what they’re providing that has allowed them to tip the balance. Likewise, Abcam will want to be analysing where the increase has come from so as to maintain this going into future years. 

Two other large scale suppliers, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Santa Cruz Biotechnology, are neck and neck, with 11 and 9 antibodies in the top 100 respectively. We know from our supplier share data that Santa Cruz has been losing share in the antibody market over recent years so if the trends in our top 100 antibody data follows the supplier shares, we’d expect to see Thermo Fisher Scientific pull away from Santa Cruz in the near future. 

When I take a closer look at the types and characteristics of the top 100 antibodies, I can see that there is a split of 79 primary antibodies to 21 secondaries; with the most cited antibody also being a secondary antibody. 

In terms of the clonality of the top 100 antibodies, we see an even split. However when looking at just primary antibodies we see 62 per cent of the antibodies being monoclonal – this makes sense given our data shows that monoclonals have taken over polyclonal antibodies

But what I found really interesting is that 27 per cent of primary antibodies are recombinant – I am impressed that this type of antibody, which is felt by many to be better for scientific reproducibility, is already occupying this number of places in the top 100. I plan to return to this data and look at the market for recombinant antibodies in more detail soon. 

I also took a look at the targets and hosts of our top 100 antibodies. The primary antibodies cover only 36 different protein targets between them, 80 per cent of which being the human target with the remaining 20 per cent being for 5 different species. The top 100 antibodies are produced from 7 different hosts, with over 55 per cent coming from Rabbit and 20 per cent from Mouse. We also see 17 per cent coming from Goat thanks to the strong presence of secondary antibodies in the top 100.

Today I am going to give away the complete list of the top 100 cited antibodies of 2019 for free – if you’d like to receive a copy of this data to your inbox please sign up below. And if you have any questions about this data or what it could tell you about the global antibody market, please don’t hesitate to contact me on rhys@citeab.co.uk

– Rhys and the CiteAb team

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