Addgene: The First Twenty Years

Addgene is ending 2024 with big plans for our future. And while we’ve been excited to share them with you, we realized our 20^th anniversary was about all the amazing years behind us, as much as it as about the amazing years in front of us. So in our last celebratory moment, we wanted to walk through some of our favorite milestones and share some thoughts from the community that makes us… us.

“The Addgene not-for-profit is an amazing service to biology scientists and has saved countless hours of lab time (in both donating and receiving labs)” — Jim Woodgett, biomedical researcher at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, posting about Addgene’s 20^th anniversary on Twitter.

In the beginning

Let’s take a quick flash back to 2004. “Shrek 2” was the most popular movie in theaters, the Razr was the hottest phone on the market, and two new websites, Facebook and Gmail, were launched. And Melina Fan, a cell biology graduate student, was frustrated by the difficulty of accessing published plasmids from other scientists. She, Kenneth Fan, and Benjie Chen decided to start an open science nonprofit that would facilitate the sharing of plasmids between scientists. The service would allow people to add a gene to a repository others could request from — Addgene! 

Addgene was established as an e-commerce company, which helped it stay ahead of the curve as access to the Internet exploded. From day one, we built systems for now-common business practices, like accepting e-signatures and designing a website users could easily navigate. This meant we could grow accessibility alongside our repository. 

“I’m sure you hear it all the time, but Addgene is a totally invaluable resource. I really appreciate the work you do to make sharing reagents and protocols so easy!” — Nina Jain, Harvard Medical School.

We want to give a special thanks to the early-adopter scientists, who trusted Addgene before we were a “labhold” name. Our first plasmid request came on September 8, 2004, for pcDNA-p160MBP, while the first request for a kit came on March 9, 2005. It took almost six years to reach our first major repository milestone — 10,000 plasmids deposited and available — and nearly seven before we had 1,000 depositing scientists. Ensuring that people knew how to access Addgene, and that we were making it possible for scientists to both deposit and request plasmids, was a major focus of our first decade. We did this the old-fashioned way: through physical outreach, visiting organizations, knocking on doors, and attending conferences. And when CRISPR arrived in 2012, our repository was rapidly able to support sharing of CRISPR constructs and information across the globe. 

“Read the Addgene guide: https://www.addgene.org/guides/crispr/” — SirHamhands, responding to a request for “any suggestion for CRISPR online course for beginners” on r/labrats, Reddit. 

Part of that work meant facilitating the Material Transfer Agreement process, which was a major barrier for depositors and requestors alike. We transformed this process by aligning institutions with standardized agreements and electronic signatures to dramatically speed up MTA approvals. In 2013 we were thrilled to receive the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network Excellence Award for our electronic MTA system. We also started our blog and YouTube channel in 2013, which continue to grow today.

“I generally refer people to Addgene for the basics of molecular biology and cloning, since they have reasonable introductions to lots of molecular biology,” — Reddit commentor Yay4sean, in r/molecularbiology.

Oh, to be young again! Addgenie Marcy (now our Sr. Director of Production) pie-fully celebrating Addgene's 10 year anniversary.

Expanding our work

In March 2015, Addgene reached the 500,000 plasmids distributed milestone! We were thrilled to see the impact our repository was having on the scientific community, but it also made us think of all the depositors whose plasmids we were entrusted with. So in June 2016, we launched the Blue Flame Award, which recognizes researchers who have at least one plasmid deposited at Addgene that has been distributed more than 100 times.  

“I really like this award because you don’t get nominated for it, it just reflects how useful the reagents we created are for the community. More than 100 labs worldwide use our plasmids. I hope they contribute to great discoveries!” — Julien Béthune, Professor at HAW Hamburg, posting about his Blue Flame Award on Bluesky.

In 2016, we also began distributing ready-to-use viral vectors from some of our most popular lentiviral and AAV vectors, as well as developing and sharing supportive educational resources. By 2017, we had distributed 1,000 ready-to-use viral vector preps. Today, that number has grown to over 114,600 viral preps. And in 2025, we’ll be expanding our viral vectors service to include AAV Packaged on Request!

“I love Addgene. I think resources like this are why my brand of neuroscience has exploded. Because we have a resource like Addgene to all get the same virus.” — Grad student visiting Addgene’s booth at the Society for Neuroscience 2023 conference.

In 2020, the world changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Addgene pivoted to support researchers combatting the virus. Our COVID-19 collection, comprised of 1302 plasmids, was shared with researchers across the globe.

As the pandemic slowed, Addgene began to think about how we could expand our support for the research community once more. Our ready-to-use viral vectors were useful for researchers wanting high quality reagents, and we realized we could use the same principles to provide recombinant antibodies, another plasmid-based product that, with Addgene’s support, could fill a community need for high-quality service, open data, and increased reproducibility of materials. In March 2022, we launched our ready-to-use recombinant antibodies service, part of the Neuroscience AntiBody Open Resource (NABOR) platform, supported by an NIH BRAIN Initiative. We also created a growing library of antibody educational resources, including our new Antibodies 101 eBook, the Antibody Guide, and two antibody animations. 

A blast from the past: Cofounder and CSO Melina Fan setting up Addgene's very first in-house NGS run.

To twenty years and beyond!

Which brings us to 2024, Addgene’s 20^th anniversary and the year our repository grew to over 150,000 plasmids, shipped out our two millionth item, and had a cumulative 120,000 citations of individual items in our repository, a tribute to how many discoveries have been made because scientists believe in openly sharing their plasmids. It’s been a privilege to find and share what stories we can, and to hear the stories others have to tell. 

"Also thanks for being Addgene. You guys rock." — Andrew York, Calico Life Sciences.

Most of all, we’re incredibly thankful for all the scientists who have joined our community by depositing, ordering, or using our educational resources. And we look forward to twenty more years of supporting you in your work, your research, and your discoveries. Thank you. You guys rock.