Mapping Knowledge Landscapes and Themes Trends of Breast Cancer Stem Cells: A Comprehensive Data-Mining-Based Study

Breast cancer, one of the most prevalent malignancies affecting women, poses significant treatment challenges due to the presence of breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs), which may contribute to treatment resistance, recurrence, and metastasis. Targeting BCSCs is increasingly seen as a promising therapeutic approach and a series of BCSC-related studies have been published recently. Nevertheless, no study has yet employed bibliometric analysis to examine the overall landscape of BCSC research.

All BCSC-related papers published between 1998 and 2023 were extracted from Web of Science Core Collection database. Bibliometric analysis was conducted by using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and two online platforms.

A sum of 1771 papers including 1502 research articles and 269 review papers were ultimately included. The annual number of papers related to BCSCs has increased with the year, and the average annual growth rate during 1998 and 2023 was 18.4%. China and the USA undoubtedly dominate on a global scale, accounting for more than three-fifths of all publications. The University of Michigan System has published the most papers in this area. On the basis of the results from highly cited studies and high-frequency keywords, the research hotspots of BCSCs currently focus on domains including stemness and membrane biomarkers, key signaling pathways and molecules, therapeutic targeting and plasticity, therapeutic resistance, tumor characteristics, and microenvironment. In addition, the findings from keywords co-occurrence and burst analysis implied that research areas such as ferroptosis, GLI1, molecular docking, glycolysis, tumor microenvironment, copper, RUNX2, hyaluronic acid, cytokines, NANGO, long non-coding RNAs, triple-negative breast cancer, nanoparticles, Hippo pathway, and T cells warrant ongoing attention in the future. Additionally, TGFB1, STAT3, MYC, GAPDH, and INS were identified as the top five genes receiving the highest research focus within BCSC studies.

This is the first study to comprehensively map the current state and global emerging trends in BCSC research through a bibliometric analysis. These findings provide a comprehensive overview of BCSC research and may serve as a useful reference for scholars and policymakers to identify emerging trends and prioritize future research directions in this field.