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. 2022 Sep 29:12:926025.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.926025. eCollection 2022.

Global research trends and hotspots on glioma stem cells

Sirong Song  1 , Haiyang Wu  1 , Fanchen Wang  1 , Jiji Jiao  1 , Lixia Xu  2 , Hongguang Wang  2   3 , Xiaoguang Tong  2   3 , Hua Yan  2   3
Affiliations

Global research trends and hotspots on glioma stem cells

Sirong Song et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Glioma stem cells (GSCs) are a sub-population of cancer stem cells with capacity of self-renewal and differentiation. Accumulated evidence has revealed that GSCs were shown to contribute to gliomagenesis, distant metastasis as well as the resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. As a result, GSCs were regarded as a promising therapeutic target in human glioma. The purpose of our study is to identify current state and hotspots of GSCs research by analyzing scientific publications through bibliometric methods.

Methods: All relevant publications on GSCs during 2003-2021 were extracted from the Science Citation Index Expanded of Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), and related information was collected and analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2016, GraphPad Prism 8 and VOSviewer software.

Results: A total of 4990 papers were included. The United States accounted for the largest number of publications (1852), the second average citations per item (ACI) value (67.54) as well as the highest H-index (157). Cancer Research was the most influential journal in this field. The most contributive institution was League of European Research Universities. RICH JN was the author with the most publications (109) and the highest H-index (59). All studies were clustered into 3 groups: "glioma stem cell properties", "cell biological properties" and "oncology therapy". The keywords "identification", "CD133" and "side population" appeared earlier with the smaller average appearing years (AAY), and the keywords"radiotherapy" and "chemotherapy" had the latest AAY. The analysis of top cited articles showed that "temozolomide", "epithelial-mesenchymal transition", and "immunotherapy" emerged as new focused issues.

Conclusion: There has been a growing number of researches on GSCs. The United States has always been a leading player in this domain. In general, the research focus has gradually shifted from basic cellular biology to the solutions of clinical concerns. "Temozolomide resistance", "epithelial-mesenchymal transition", and "immunotherapy" should be given more attention in the future.

Keywords: EMT - epithelial to mesenchymal transformation; bibliometric analysis; chemotherapy resistance; glioma stem cell (GSC); hotpots.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
We searched the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) on GSCs and performed a visualization analysis from the perspectives of countries, institutions, disciplines, journals, authors, references and keywords to predict future research hotspots in this field.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The flowchart of data collection about GSCs on WoSCC.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The annual publications and citations annual number of publications and citations in the field of glioma stem cells (GSCs) from 2003 to 2021. There is an increasing trend in GSCs.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A) The global distribution of different countries involved in glioma stem cells (GSCs) research based on their number of publications. The United State pays the most attention to GSCs, followed by China and Italy. (B) The growth trends of annual number of publications in the top 5 prolific countries during the period 2003-2021. The network visualization map (C) and overlay visualization map (D) of country co-authorship analysis generated by VOS viewer. Countries with the minimum number of 50 publications were assigned into five clusters.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Institution citation map (A) and co-authorship network map (B) in regard to the research on glioma stem cells research. The connection between the nodes represents a co-citation relationship. Thickness of the line reflects the frequency of the cooperation. And the thicker the line, the stronger the cooperation.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The network visualization map (A) and density visualization map (B) of journal co-citation analysis. In the visualization map, each node represents a journal and its size is proportional to the number of publications. The deeper the color of a node, the more frequently of keywords appears.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The author co-citation network map (A) and co-authorship overlay map (B) generated by VOS viewer. Each node represents an author, and node size indicates the number of publications. The purple nodes represent the author appear earlier, whereas the red nodes reflect the recent occurrence.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The network visualization map (A) and overlay visualization map (B) of keywords co-occurrence analysis on glioma stem cells research. Keywords with similar categories are gathered in a cluster. There are three clusters, including glioma stem cell properties” (red nodes), “cell biological properties” (green nodes) and “oncology therapy” (blue nodes).
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