Dublin life-science company pairs two years of researcher behaviour on its own site with PubMed publication records to map where laboratory biology is heading
-- Assay Genie, the Dublin-based supplier of ELISA kits, antibodies and assays to research labs in more than 50 countries, published Research Pulse 2026 on 22 September 2026. The analysis tracks how fast scientific fields are growing by combining publication counts from PubMed, the US National Library of Medicine's index of biomedical literature, with anonymised data from over 300,000 researcher visits to Assay Genie product pages.
The report finds a handful of fields expanding far faster than science as a whole. PubMed indexed about 10% more papers in 2025 than in 2021. Over the same period, PubMed papers on protein lactylation rose from 20 to 935, a 47-fold increase. Lactylation is a chemical tag, derived from lactate, that switches genes on and off; it was first described in a 2019 paper indexed by PubMed.
PubMed papers on p-tau217, the blood marker behind the new wave of Alzheimer's blood tests, went from 19 to 422, a 22-fold increase. The PubMed count more than doubled again in the most recent 12 months, rising by 143%. Between 2021 and 2025, PubMed papers on GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide and tirzepatide grew six-fold, from 569 to 3,445; papers on ferroptosis, an iron-dependent form of cell death studied in cancer and neurodegeneration, grew five-fold; and COVID-19 research fell by 70%, from 118,801 papers to 35,757.
To check whether these literature trends reach the lab bench, Assay Genie compared them with what researchers look up on its website. Across 30 research topics, several showed the same direction in both sources over the 12 months to August 2026. Neurofilament light (NfL), a blood marker of nerve damage, showed PubMed papers up 29% and Assay Genie's share of researcher visits up 63%. HbA1c, the long-term blood-sugar marker, showed PubMed papers up 26% and visit share up 57%. Inflammation markers CRP and IL-6 showed PubMed papers up 27% and 23% respectively and visit share up 40% and 35% respectively. Cellular senescence, the biology of 'zombie' ageing cells, showed PubMed papers up 39% and visit share up 17%, whilst COVID-19 showed PubMed papers down 28% and visit share down 19%.
PubMed counts come from the NCBI E-utilities API, searching titles and abstracts and dated by entry into PubMed. Assay Genie data covers organic search sessions on product pages in Google Analytics 4 for September 2024 to August 2026. Automated (bot) traffic was excluded, and results are given as each topic's share of all product-page visits so that changes in overall site traffic do not affect them. The analysis was carried out in September 2026.
"Publication counts tell you what scientists are writing about. What they search for tells you what they are about to measure," said Seán Mac Fhearraigh PhD, co-founder and Chief Operations Officer of Assay Genie. "When both move the same way, as they do for NfL, inflammation and metabolic markers, that is a strong sign a field is moving from discovery into routine lab work. The lactylation and p-tau217 numbers are remarkable. Five years ago these were niche topics, and today they are among the fastest-growing areas in biomedicine."
The full Research Pulse 2026 report, including charts and methodology, is available on the Assay Genie website.
About Assay Genie
Assay Genie is a Dublin-based life-science company that supplies research reagents to scientists worldwide, including ELISA kits, multiplex immunoassays, antibodies and cell-based assays, across a catalogue of more than 100,000 products.
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Name: Seán Mac Fhearraigh
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Organization: Assay Genie Ltd
Website: https://www.assaygenie.com
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