Drug Repurposing in Cancer Research: A Bibliometric Analysis from 2012 to 2021

Background: In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the research articles indexed on the Web of Science about drug repurposing in cancer between 2012 and November 2021. Methods: Findings were obtained from the Web of Science database. A bibliometric method was performed to analyze publication types, research fields, citations, countries, institutions, active journals, authors, and keywords. The data were supported by using collaboration networks, including visualization maps. Globally, of 5,568 publications, only 408 were research papers in cancer research. However, the number of publications and citations was observed to increase significantly over the years, especially in 2020 and 2021. The majority of the publication types were original articles in the oncology field. Unsurprisingly, the USA was the most active country in publishing articles. Results: The University of Texas in the USA was the institution with the highest number of publications. A team of researchers led by Zdenek Skrott published the most cited paper. While Pantziarka’s research team was the most active in publication productivity, Ferlay J’s research group had the highest value of citation burst. Cancers and Cancer Research were the most active journals in terms of publications and citation numbers, respectively. After the keyword drug repurposing, the most frequently used keywords were “apoptosis” and “breast cancer”, indicating the research hotspots. Conclusion: This is the first bibliometric research in detail to point out that drug repurposing in cancer is a novel and growing area, especially in developed countries.