Research progress of exosome-hydrogel between 2013 and 2023 from the perspective of bibliometrics

Exosomes, particularly those derived from mesenchymal stem cells, play an important role in treating and diagnosing various diseases. Hydrogels have been demonstrated to be suitable materials for encapsulating exosomes to preserve their biological activity and enable controlled release. Recently, the incorporation of exosomes into hydrogels has emerged as an important research field. This study aims to reveal trends and hotspots of exosome-hydrogel research results over the last 10 years.

Publications about exosome-hydrogel between 2013 and 2023 were searched from the Web of Science Core Collection. VOSviewer (version 1.6.18), CiteSpace (version 6.2.R2), the R package "bibliometric" (version 3.2.1), and Scimago Graphica were employed for further bibliometric analysis and data visualization.

From January 2013 to December 2023, 1354 documents (1093 articles and 261 reviews) were written by 7651 authors from 1612 institutions across 72 countries and published in 392 journals. China had the highest number of publications (630), and Shanghai Jiaotong University published the most articles (53). Soft Matter is the most prolific journal (36 documents, average citation: 19.8%), whereas ACS Nano (25 documents, average citation: 70.3%) is the most authoritative journal in this field. Z Gu (13 documents) and A Hao (10 documents) were the most productive authors. The most popular keywords were "hydrogel," "vesicles," "exosomes," "drug delivery," "nanoparticles," "release," and "mesenchymal stem cells." Furthermore, our findings indicated that exosome-hydrogel compounds were most frequently used in diabetic wound healing and bone regeneration.

This study revealed a growing interest in exosome-hydrogel for managing related diseases, especially, diabetic wound healing and bone regeneration. This study offers new insights into research fields of exosome-hydrogel, and may benefit further research.