A researcher's perspective on the quantity of osteosarcoma in vitro studies

Osteosarcoma is a primary malignant bone tumour, for which no improvement in survival rate has been made since the nineteen seventies. We set out to systemically identify the in vitro studies performed in the past two decades describing potential future therapies. Strikingly, we obtained a total of 5282 PubMed hits on this subject. The amount of publications has increased almost exponentially over the past few years. Studies from Chinese institutes are mainly responsible for this huge increase, accounting for 53% of the publications in 2015. Approximately 1/3 of all drugs described in the past three years could be classified as traditional medicine. Furthermore, it struck our attention that even though in such studies multiple cell lines are essential to represent the heterogeneity in patients, many studies were performed with only one or two cell lines, i.e. U-2 OS or MG-63. These cells are fast growing, facilitating rapid experimental application but also boosting drug responsiveness. This probably explains why so many in vitro studies have been published for this relatively rare disease. Furthermore, it illustrates the current publication pressure, especially in China.