Neural Regeneration Research ›› 2019, Vol. 14 ›› Issue (10): 1823-1832.doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.257535

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Mapping theme trends and knowledge structures for human neural stem cells: a quantitative and co-word biclustering analysis for the 2013–2018 period

Wen-Juan Wei 1, 2, Bei Shi 3, Xin Guan 1, 2, Jing-Yun Ma 1, 2, Ya-Chen Wang 1, 2, Jing Liu 1, 2   

  1. 1 Stem Cell Clinical Research Center, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
    2 National Joint Engineering Laboratory, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China
    3 Department of Physiology, China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
  • Online:2019-10-15 Published:2019-10-15
  • Contact: Jing Liu, PhD, liujing.dlrmc@hotmail.com
  • Supported by:

    This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81471308 (to JL); the Stem Cell Clinical Research Project in China, No. CMR-20161129-1003 (to JL); the Innovation Technology Funding of Dalian in China, No. 2018J11CY025 (to JL).

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Abstract:

Neural stem cells, which are capable of multi-potential differentiation and self-renewal, have recently been shown to have clinical potential for repairing central nervous system tissue damage. However, the theme trends and knowledge structures for human neural stem cells have not yet been studied bibliometrically. In this study, we retrieved 2742 articles from the PubMed database from 2013 to 2018 using “Neural Stem Cells” as the retrieval word. Co-word analysis was conducted to statistically quantify the characteristics and popular themes of human neural stem cell-related studies. Bibliographic data matrices were generated with the Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder. We identified 78 high-frequency Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms. A visual matrix was built with the repeated bisection method in gCLUTO software. A social network analysis network was generated with Ucinet 6.0 software and GraphPad Prism 5 software. The analyses demonstrated that in the 6-year period, hot topics were clustered into five categories. As suggested by the constructed strategic diagram, studies related to cytology and physiology were well-developed, whereas those related to neural stem cell applications, tissue engineering, metabolism and cell signaling, and neural stem cell pathology and virology remained immature. Neural stem cell therapy for stroke and Parkinson’s disease, the genetics of microRNAs and brain neoplasms, as well as neuroprotective agents, Zika virus, Notch receptor, neural crest and embryonic stem cells were identified as emerging hot spots. These undeveloped themes and popular topics are potential points of focus for new studies on human neural stem cells.

Key words: nerve regeneration, human neural stem cells, PubMed, bibliometric analysis, biclustering analysis, co-word analysis, strategic diagram analysis, social network analysis, hot research topics, mapping theme trends, knowledge structures, neural regeneration