Global research dynamics in metabolic biomarkers and cancer: a bibliometric study from 2015 to 2025

Metabolic biomarkers are important for the early detection and prognostic assessment of cancer. Nevertheless, a bibliometric analysis examining their research landscape within this domain has not been performed. This study seeks to investigate the current research landscape of metabolic biomarkers related to cancer from 2015 to 2025 and to highlight emerging trends, offering valuable insights for future research directions.

Articles published from 2015 to 2025 were extracted from the Web of Science database, and an analysis was performed utilizing R software, along with CiteSpace and VOSviewer.We retrieved clinical trials published between 2015 and 2025 from the PubMed database to analyze the clinical progress in this field.

This research encompassed 943 articles in total. Investigations into metabolic biomarkers related to cancer have demonstrated a consistent growth in publications between 2015 and 2023, which was succeeded by a significant surge from 2023 to 2024. The country with the highest number of publications is China, with the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy following in that order. Furthermore, China has demonstrated exceptional performance in international collaboration, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Zhejiang University emerging as the most prominent collaborative centers. Cancers is recognized as the journal that publishes the greatest quantity of articles within this domain, whereas PLOS One stands out as the journal with the highest citation frequency. Common keywords in the literature include terms such as 'risk,' 'metabolism,' and 'breast cancer.' Research hotspots primarily focus on their application across different cancer types, multi-omics and big data-driven discovery, and the development potential of microbiota-derived markers, and the lag of clinical transformation of metabolic biomarkers, etc. CONCLUSION: The vast promise that metabolic biomarkers hold for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer has attracted considerable interest from researchers across the globe. They are anticipated to emerge as a central theme in the future of cancer prevention and therapeutic strategies. This article offers an in-depth analysis of existing research, addresses key challenges in the field, and provides critical insights for future studies.