Abstract
Extracellular vesicles transport variable content and have crucial functions in cell–cell communication. The role of extracellular vesicles in cancer is a current hot topic, and no bibliometric study has ever analyzed research production regarding their role in breast cancer and indicated the trends in the field. In this way, we aimed to investigate the trends in breast cancer management involved with extracellular vesicle research. Articles were retrieved from Scopus, including all the documents published concerning breast cancer and extracellular vesicles. We analyzed authors, journals, citations, affiliations, and keywords, besides other bibliometric analyses, using R Studio version 3.6.2. and VOSviewer version 1.6.0. A total of 1151 articles were retrieved, and as the main result, our analysis revealed trending topics on biomarkers of liquid biopsy, drug delivery, chemotherapy, autophagy, and microRNA. Additionally, research related to extracellular vesicles in breast cancer has been focused on diagnosis, treatment, and mechanisms of action of breast tumor-derived vesicles. Future studies are expected to explore the role of extracellular vesicles on autophagy and microRNA, besides investigating the application of extracellular vesicles from liquid biopsies for biomarkers and drug delivery, enabling the development and validation of therapeutic strategies for specific cancers.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
All the documents published were analyzed, without filtering by year, language, or source, aiming to include everything that has been published on the theme, different from the approaches adopted in other bibliometric studies [35,36]
The search resulted in 1151 documents, in which the first article involving exosomes and breast cancer was published in 1998; the first use of the term “exosomes”
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cancer is a disease characterized by the rapid growth and division of abnormal cells [1]. Is considered a public health concern for being one of the major causes of death and the second among non-communicable diseases worldwide (8.2 million deaths) [2]. Breast cancer is the most common among women and is associated with the highest mortality rate [3]. In 2020, it was estimated that breast cancer may be accountable for 11.7% of new cases and 6.9% of cancer deaths [4]. The mortality of this type of cancer increases when it progresses and becomes metastatic, reducing the chances of survival to 10% [5]
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