A bibliometric analysis of global research trends in tumor microenvironment based nanotherapy

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a key factor in cancer progression and drug resistance. Nanomedicine provides a new solution to overcome the limitations of traditional therapies by regulating the TME. With the rapid growth of interdisciplinary research in this field, although there are many descriptive reviews, there is still a lack of a quantitative analysis of long-term research results.

Literature from the Web of Science database was analyzed to reveal the knowledge structure, the evolution of core concepts, and the future research frontier in this field using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, R-bibliometrix, and R packages.

Analysis shows that the number of relevant publications has grown rapidly since 2020, and China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made outstanding contributions. The dynamic evolution of Subject Categories and Research Themes clarifies the development trajectory of this field from the basic drug delivery theme to the regulation of the complex TME. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies core knowledge areas such as ROS-based therapies, metabolic control, immune microenvironment remodeling, and drug delivery. The analysis of cited references and highly cited literature reveals the knowledge base and milestone research that drive the development of this field. The current research frontier and hot spots focus on reshaping the immune microenvironment, novel regulated cell death mechanisms, ROS-based therapies, tumor metabolic reprogramming, combination therapies, and biomimetic/theranostic platforms.

This study reveals the paradigm shift in nanomaterials from passive delivery carriers to multifunctional, bioactive regulators of the TME. Through quantitative analysis, the future development direction of multi-target synergistic intervention is clarified, which provides an important reference for the follow-up research on personalized tumor treatment.