Global trends and hotspots in research on organoids between 2011 and 2020: a bibliometric analysis

There is a lack of effective platforms that can rapidly screen drugs, for patients to achieve precision treatment. Since an organoid simulates the tissue or organ structure and function in vitro, it can be applied to predict the response to therapy, personalized medicine, and drug screening in clinical practice. However, the rapid development of this field meets several challenges. This study aimed to evaluate the current state of the organoid and prioritize future research areas using bibliometric analysis.

We selected articles and reviewers from the Web of Science database, using the search strategy syntax including "organoid" or "organoids", for the years 2011 to 2020. We conducted a general analysis and a thematic evolution analysis using the bibliometrix R package. Networks connecting productive countries/regions/institutions/authors were generated using VOSviewer. We performed a co-occurrence analysis using VOSviewer, burstness analysis using Citespace, and co-word biclustering analysis and landform map using BICOMB and gCLUTO to identify possible current and future directions and hotspots.

We selected 3,168 publications for our analysis. We found that the number of publications in this field has increased sharply. The greatest contributions to organoid research have been made by the United States (among countries) and the University of Michigan (among institutions), and Hans Clevers is the most influential author. The journals with the highest number of selected articles and citations are Cancer Research and Nature. We observed the possibility of keyword classification into five clusters. Their trend changed from "methods to build organoids" (e.g., "lgr5+ stem cell" and "3D culture") to "practical applications of organoids" (e.g., "cystic fibrosis" and "Zika virus").

Our study used bibliometric analysis to provide an in-depth understanding of the trends and hotspots of organoid research. The primarily important subject matters are drug screening, disease modeling, personalized medicine, regenerative medicine, and developmental biology. However, this field still faces limitations in the form of lack of reproducibility, low levels of maturity and function, and the absence of appropriate readouts. Therefore, these five significant topics, and possible solutions to limitations (involving bioengineering strategies), might be noteworthy in the future.