Each year, the CiteAb Top 100 Antibodies report highlights the reagents cited most frequently in published research, offering an evidence-based assessment of the products scientists trust the most to advance their work. For nine consecutive years—every year CiteAb has tracked citation data—CST antibodies have topped the list, with more citations per antibody than any other vendor.
Drawing on data from more than eight million research-use-only antibodies and over 400 companies, CiteAb is the industry benchmark for antibody citation analysis. In 2024, CST again represented the largest share of top-cited reagents, including the leading portfolio of recombinant antibodies and discovery-enabling products.
Year over year, the CiteAb results confirm that scientists trust CST reagents. Why? Read on for a closer look at the 2024 data—and what sets our antibodies apart.
Top-Ranked Recombinant Antibody Supplier
Manufactured in vitro using gene cloning, recombinant monoclonal antibodies are increasingly preferred for their reproducibility, batch-to-batch consistency, and animal-free manufacturing. According to CiteAb’s 2024 analysis, recombinants account for roughly one quarter of the top 100 most cited antibodies, a trend that has held steady in recent years.
In 2024, CST was again the highest-ranked recombinant antibody supplier, with 19 of the top 24 recombinants coming from CST—including 9 of the top 10.
“Recombinant antibody technology is the present and future of reliable antibody reagents,” says Roberto "Roby" Polakiewicz, Chief Scientific Officer at CST. “Because we have cloned, sequenced, and recombinantly expressed our monoclonal antibodies, they are entirely reproducible, without the lot-to-lot variability of hybridomas and polyclonals. Today, the large majority of our monoclonal antibodies are recombinant, and nearly 99% of new CST antibodies are generated and produced using recombinant DNA technology.”
CST was also recognized as CiteAb's Recombinant Antibody Supplier of the Year in 2024, a distinction that was also awarded to CST in 2022, the first and only other time this recognition has been presented.
Leading with Discovery-Enabling Antibodies
Support reagents such as secondary antibodies, loading controls, and epitope tags typically make up about two-thirds of the products featured on the CiteAb Top 100 report—including this year’s list. While essential to experimental design and data interpretation, these reagents aren’t the ones driving novel biological insights.
Primary antibodies targeting key signaling molecules and cellular markers—what CST refers to as discovery reagents—truly drive new scientific understanding.
Of the 29 antibodies on the 2024 list that can be classified as discovery-enabling reagents, 21 are from CST—including 9 of the top 10.
The top-ranked discovery antibodies include the modified and unmodified forms of critical targets, such as Akt, NF-κB, caspase-3, p44/42 MAPK, PARP, AMPK, and many others. These reagents empower researchers to dissect cellular signaling pathways, study disease mechanisms, and validate emerging therapeutic targets to drive research forward.
The Most-Cited Antibody Supplier—Of All Time.
For the last quarter-century, CST has set the standard for product performance, prioritizing scientific excellence and antibody specificity, consistency, and reproducibility. This commitment is reflected in the 2024 results: CST antibodies make up 31 of the top 100 reagents on the list, including 6 of the top 10.
The 2024 results mark nine consecutive years with CST as the top-ranked antibody supplier—every year CiteAb has published its list.
Why do researchers trust CST? The answer lies in our deliberate focus on quality over quantity. By design, our catalog includes around 13,500 reagents compared to the +100,000 offered by other vendors. This focused approach ensures every antibody clone undergoes extensive validation testing to confirm specificity and reliability. It's why you won’t see CST routinely withdraw products the way other manufacturers do as their quality standards shift—our products work the first time, and every time.
“We hear it time and time again, when a researcher needs an antibody they can trust, they turn to CST,” says Polakiewicz. “The reason behind this is the effort we put into thoroughly validating our antibodies. We simply don’t sell reagents that we aren’t 100% confident in.”
Our stringent validation standards take time and effort, but we believe they’re worth it, because reproducible science starts with trustworthy tools.
Learn more about product performance at CST:
