Global Drug Repurposing Research from 2000 to 2018: A Bibliometric Analysis
Wei Li, Li Wan · Advances in Bioscience and Bioengineering · 2021
Objectives: Drug repurposing (DR), a promising tool to accelerate drug discovery, has increasingly drawn scientists’ attention. This study aims to explore the landscape of DR through visualization analysis on DR-related publications. Methods: Data were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection between 2000 and 2018. Data was analyzed in terms of publication outputs, journals, countries, institutions, authors, co-authorship, co-citation, research hotspots and evolution trends through VOSviewer and CiteSpace. Results: From 2000 to 2018, we can see a continuous growth in the number of DR related publications. PLoS One published the highest number of publications, followed by Scientific Reports, Oncotarget and Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The United States (USA) was the most leading country in DR research, in terms of publications, institutions, co-authorship and co-citation. Talevi A (Argentina) was the most productive authors and Ashburn TT (USA) contributed the most cited articles in this area. The hotspots of DR research were cancer, drug discovery, apoptosis, polypharmacology and virtual screening, whereas the emerging trends of DR were connectivity map, database, pathway and apoptosis. Conclusions: This study might help beginners to quickly understand the cutting-edge knowledge, mainstream research directions, hot spots and research trends of this research field.