Bidirectional crosstalk between the epithelial-mesenchymal transition and immunotherapy: A bibliometric study

Figures & data

Figure 1. Potential molecular mechanisms of EMT involving in immunotherapy (a). Procedure of data research and collection (b).

Figure 2. Global trend of publications and citations on EMT-immunotherapy research from 1999 to 2022.

Figure 3. Analysis of cooperation among countries. (a) Geographical distribution map of countries. (b) Annual publication of top 10 countries. (c) The international collaboration’s visualization map of countries. (d) lization and time-dependent overlay visualization map of countries.

Table 1. Top 10 productive countries related to EMT and immunotherapy.

Rank	Country	Counts	Percentages	SCP	MCP	MCP-Ratio	TLS	Total citation	Average citation paper
1	CHINA	639	0.490783	565	74	0.116	137	10382	16.25
2	USA	220	0.168971	154	66	0.3	240	19028	86.50
3	ITALY	47	0.036098	34	13	0.277	45	2991	63.64
4	JAPAN	40	0.030722	33	7	0.175	15	2195	54.88
5	FRANCE	38	0.029186	20	18	0.474	68	3151	82.92
6	INDIA	35	0.026882	18	17	0.486	50	814	23.26
7	GERMANY	29	0.022273	20	9	0.31	55	1966	67.79
8	SOUTH KOREA	25	0.019201	21	4	0.16	24	1216	48.64
9	IRAN	24	0.018433	10	14	0.583	45	1331	55.46
10	SPAIN	23	0.017665	18	5	0.217	38	2817	122.48

Figure 4. The strongest citation bursts of country. The strongest citation bursts refer to a variable change dramatically in short period.

Figure 5. Organizations analysis in EMT-immunotherapy research. (a,b) Overlay visualization and time-dependent overlay visualization map of organizations. (c) immunotherapy research.

Table 2. The top 10 productive institutions ranked by the number of publications.

Affiliation	Articles	country	TLS	Total citation	Average citation per paper
FUDAN UNIV	104	China	29	959	9.22
CENT SOUTH UNIV	90	China	19	278	3.09
SHANGHAI JIAO TONG UNIV	78	China	45	1304	16.72
SUN YAT SEN UNIV	77	China	25	307	3.99
UNIV TEXAS MD ANDERSON CANC CTR	71	USA	24	3836	54.03
ZHEJIANG UNIV	60	China	25	382	6.37
ZHENGZHOU UNIV	56	China	26	362	6.46
NANJING MED UNIV	55	China	15	267	4.85
SICHUAN UNIV	55	China	11	194	3.53
HUAZHONG UNIV SCI AND TECHNOL	54	China	17	348	6.44

Figure 6. Distribution of source journals. (a) The annual growth of top five productive journals. (b) The overly visualization of citation journals. (c) The overly visualization of cited journals. (d) The dual-map overlay map of journals.

Table 3. Top 10 citation journal and co-cited journal related to EMT-immunotherapy research.

Citation journals	Count	IF	JCR	Total citation	Cited journals	Countries	IF	JCR	Total citation
Cancers	83(19.34%)	5.2	Q2	1206	Cancer research	USA	11.2	Q1	5274
Frontiers in oncology	66(15.38%)	4.7	Q2	854	Clinical cancer research	USA	11.5	Q1	3432
Frontiers in immunology	61(14.2%)	7.3	Q1	897	Nature	UK	64.8	Q1	3067
International journal of molecular sciences	37(8.6%)	5.6	Q1	481	Cell	USA	64.5	Q1	2744
Frontiers in cell and Developmental biology	24(5.59%)	5.5	Q1	248	P natl acad sci usa	USA	11.1	Q1	2386
Oncoimmunology	23(5.35%)	7.2	Q1	909	Oncotarget	USA	N/C	N/C	2292
Frontiers in genetics	21(4.89%)	3.7	Q2	28	Oncogene	UK	8	Q1	2145
Frontiers in Pharmacology	21(4.89%)	5.6	Q1	165	Plos one	USA	3.7	Q2	2126
Cancer letters	19(4.43%)	9.7	Q1	741	Cancer cell	USA	50.3	Q1	1885
Aging-us	16(3.72%)	5.2	Q2	68	Nat commun	UK	16.6	Q1	1792

Figure 7. CiteSpace visualization map of the reference (a), ridgeline plot of references (b), and timeline view of references (c). Each node on the lines represent a reference, and the cluster with different color showed the time evolution.

Table 4. The top 10 most productive authors related to EMT-immunotherapy.

Rank	Citation author	Documents	Citations	TLS	H-index	Cited-author	Citations	TLS	H-index
1	Palena, claudia	17	998	30	38	Hanahan, d	228	5443	109
2	Chouaib, salem	15	1102	26	27	Zhang, y	186	4683	89
3	Schlom, jeffrey	12	863	27	68	Thiery, jp	167	3235	106
4	Janji, bassam	8	629	22	43	Liu, y	161	4484	78
5	Noman, muhammad zaeem	8	778	25	36	Mantovani, a	161	4860	186
6	Thiery, jean paul	8	584	20	106	Wang, y	161	4289	104
7	Liu, yu	7	49	4	53	Kalluri, r	156	4095	115
8	Wang, xin	7	67	2	32	Yang, j	143	3703	142
9	Ashrafizadeh, milad	6	236	26	49	Jemal, a	141	2099	136
10	Bonavida, benjamin	6	399	0	70	Li, j	131	3306	67

Figure 8. The top 25 references with the strongest citation bursts visualized by CiteSpace.

Figure 9. Clustering co-occurrence map of keywords in EMT-immunotherapy study (a) and the top 18 keywords with the strongest citation bursts (b).

Table 5. Top 10 co-cited references concerning the research of EMT-immunotherapy.

Title	Year	Journal	First author	Total citations	Average citation per year	Main conclusion
Depletion of Carcinoma-Associated Fibroblasts and Fibrosis Induces Immunosuppression and Accelerates Pancreas Cancer with Reduced Survival	2014	Cancer Cell	Oezdemir, Berna C	1621	158.7	Reduction of fibrosis and my fibroblasts enhanced EMT and immune surveillance. (original article)
Triple-negative breast cancer: challenges and opportunities of a heterogeneous disease	2016	Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology	Bianchini, Giampaolo	1577	191.38	Relevant molecular findings in TNBC from the past decade and the most promising therapeutic opportunities derived from these data. (review)
Chemokines in the cancer microenvironment and their relevance in cancer immunotherapy	2017	Nature Reviews Immunology	Nagarsheth, Nisha	1224	168.86	The potential chemokine targets and relevance cancer immunotherapy. (review)
Cancer Metastasis Is Accelerated through Immunosuppression during Snail-induced EMT of Cancer Cells	2009	Cancer Cell	Kudo-Saito, Chie	661	129.6	Inhibition of snail-induced EMT could suppress cancer metastasis and immunosuppression. (original article)
Tumor-associated macrophages in tumor metastasis: biological roles and clinical therapeutic applications	2019	Journal of Hematology & Oncology	Lin, Yuxin	654	42.4	The underly mechanism of Tumor-associated.macrophages (TAMs) in tumor metastasis and clinical therapeutic applications. (review)
Tumor Microenvironment Characterization in Gastric Cancer Identifies Prognostic and Immunotherapeutically Relevant Gene Signatures	2019	Cancer Immunology Research	Zeng, Dongqiang	528	103.4	The feature of Tumor microenvironment (TME) and new strategies for cancer treatment by using bioinformatics analysis (original articles)
Epithelial-Mesenchymal Plasticity in Cancer Progression and Metastasis	2019	Developmental Cell	Lu, Wei	501	98.2	A review of EMT in cancer progression. (review)
Extracellular Matrix in the Tumor Microenvironment and Its Impact on Cancer Therapy	2020	Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences	Henke, Erik	449	112.25	A review of the role of extracellular matrix (ECM) in cancer treatment. (review)
Drug resistance and combating drug resistance in cancer	2019	Cancer Drug Resistance	Wang, Xuan	414	82.4	The mechanism of drug resistance and potential strategies for drug resistance therapy. (review)
Immunological landscape and immunotherapy of hepatocellular carcinoma	2015	Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology	Prieto, Jesus	404	44	Description of immunotherapies in HCC and its combination therapies. (review)

Table 6. The top 10 EMT-immunotherapy related articles with the most citations.

Title	Date of publishing	Citations	Total link strength	Journal	JCR (2022)	First author
Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation	2011	150	846	Cell	Q1	Douglas Hanahan
TGF beta attenuates tumor response to PD-L1 blockade by contributing to exclusion of T cells	2018	108	1016	Nature	Q1	Sanjeev Mariathasan
The epithelial-mesenchymal transition generates cells with properties of stem cells	2008	104	711	Cell	Q1	Sendurai A Mani
Inferring tumor purity and stromal and immune cell admixture from expression data	2013	102	809	Nature communication	Q1	Kosuke Yoshihara
Metastasis is regulated via microRNA-200/ZEB1 axis control of tumor cell PD-L1 expression and intratumoral immunosuppression	2014	88	838	Nature communication	Q1	Limo Chen
The blockade of immune checkpoints in cancer immunotherapy	2012	86	657	Nature Review Cancer	Q1	Drew M Pardoll
The basics of epithelial-mesenchymal transition	2009			The Journal of Clinical investigation	Q1	Kalluri, Raghu
Molecular mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal transition	2014	74	631	Nature Reviews molecular Cell Biology	Q1	Samy Lamouille
Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Is Associated with a Distinct Tumor Microenvironment Including Elevation of Inflammatory Signals and Multiple Immune Checkpoints in Lung Adenocarcinoma	2016	73	755	Clinical Cancer Research	Q1	Yanyan Lou
New insights into the mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal transition and implications for cancer	2019	72	641	Nature Reviews molecular Cell Biology	Q1	Dongre, Anushka

Table 7. Top 5 key molecules, states, disease, and cell types in studies on EMT-immunotherapy.

Rank	Molecules	Frequency	States	Frequency	Disease	Frequency	Cell types	Frequency
1	tgf-beta	121	EMT	667	Breast cancer	121	T-cells	97
2	nf-kappa-b	105	Metastasis	138	Colorectal-cancer	87	Regulatory t- cells	95
3	e-cadherin	98	Cell survival	102	Lung-cancer	68	Stem- cells	76
4	Endothelial growth-factor	46	Invasion	97	Hepatocellular-carcinoma	51	Suppressor-cells	67
5	pd-l1	38	Growth	89	Prostate-cancer	45	Dendritic cells	59

Data availability statement

All the data involving in this study can be found in online repositories. The details of repositories can be found in manuscript/supplementary material.