Big isn’t always best - this award recognises the small company (maximum 1000 antibodies in its portfolio) with the most citations per antibody.

This award for 2014 goes to Immunostar, a Wisconsin USA based company that was started in 1982 and specialises in immunohistochemistry. Many of the company’s antibodies are used in neuroscience, and in other tissues such as spinal cord and adrenals.

Colleen Hammer, Director of Operations at Immunostar, explains what makes this small company’s antibodies special: “Our line is well-characterized, with high-quality primary antibodies, some of which have been offered for thirty years. All antibodies sold by ImmunoStar are tested using immunohistochemistry and only those with the greatest staining results are sold.

“Because the antibodies are used successfully by so many researchers and published in more than a thousand papers with various techniques and species, customers can be confident to know what to expect with ImmunoStar’s antibodies.”

From the data generated through CiteAb we are able to gain a really clear picture of the way antibodies are used around the world. We can tell which countries are investing most in research using antibodies, which companies are seeing growth or decline, which antibodies are most successful and which areas of research are seeing growth.

ImmunoStar was established as the 2014 winner for this award established based on CiteAb citation data from the January - December 2014 period. Congratulations to ImmunoStar - a small companies with high quality products!

RUNNER UP: CYTOSKELETON

Cytoskeleton, based in Denver, Colorado, was launched in 1993 by Kim Middleton and Ashley Davis, with a commitment to help life scientists investigate the biological mechanisms underlying health and disease. Today the company is doing a great job developing and manufacturing high quality innovative and reagents and providing support for their use by academic and industrial researchers.

RUNNER UP: BADRILLA

Badrilla specialises in the generation and validation of phosphospecific antibodies to cardiovascular targets. In addition, Badrilla is developing antibodies to fluorescent proteins. They are based in Leeds, UK and are doing a great job of serving customers direct from the UK with the help of distributors Wako (in Japan) and Cedarlane Labs (in Canada & USA).