Cancer research in India: Time to collaborate.

What can be more befitting than bringing a large number of cancer research experts from various parts of the globe to discuss recent advancements in complex cellular signaling network and cancer in a city that has more than 300-year-old rich history of culture and produced all nobel laureates from India. This meeting was organized by CSIR-IICB, which brought together several scientists from USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Italy and Australia, as well as a very large number of scientists from all over India to discuss emerging areas such as cancer cell signaling, signal networks, cell survival and novel or traditional therapeutic approaches to treat different cancers. The meeting was particularly enriched with the presence of large contingent of PhD students and research scholars from all over India, who presented their latest research findings in the area of cancer through more than 100 posters and 20 oral presentations. The meeting was as a part of the 30th Annual Convention of the Indian Association for Cancer Research (IACR) a premier body that promotes cancer research, education and awareness in India. IACR was founded in 1981 and is now a leading body of cancer research in India. It continues to attract people from diverse areas with a common interest in cancer.

Cancer research in India: national priorities, global results

First international workshops on Provocative Questions (PQ) in cancer research, October–November 2014, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Thiruvananthapuram, India

This paper examines the theoretical aspects of Bradford’s Law and Leimkuhler Model, their relevance across subject areas, their implementation forms, and their significance in Indian cancer research literature. The study analyzes 16,914 research papers published in 2,277 journals on cancer research in India between 2012 and 2021, sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The total number of citations obtained from these papers is 378,409, and a ranking table of journals and their citations is provided. The first phase of the study applies Bradford’s Law in verbal and algebraic forms to identify the journal distribution pattern, revealing a high percentage of error. The Leimkuhler Model estimates the number of journals in the core and successive zones, resulting in a minor percentage error of 0.00030171278%. The study identifies the International Journal of Cancer and PLoS One as core journals, emphasizing their importance in Indian cancer research. The findings can benefit oncologists, researchers, practitioners, and medical librarians in understanding scientific literature distribution and promoting research output effectively.

Background: Demographic and economic changes in the past two decades and the resultant increase in noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and mental and neurological conditions has burdened the developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries alike. Cancer deaths that occurred in developing countries alone contributed to 55% of all the cancer deaths that occurred in the year 1990. It is pointed out that there is a noticeable gap in cancer treatment in India in terms of diagnostics and management of the disease. In the preceding context, the present paper analyzes the emerging trends in cancer research in India and identifies the issues and challenges of access and equity in health innovations related to cancer treatment. Materials and Methods: The empirical analysis is performed on a unique dataset of publications and clinical trials related to oncological research. It was constructed from the Web of Science and Clinical Trial Registry of India databases. Results: With the application of emerging technologies, Cancer research and innovations exhibit new trends such as shift in the site of research, new funding patterns, collaboration pattern, and the emergence of new actors such as the contract research organizations. Conclusion: These trends have several implications for the access and affordability of medical innovations in cancer treatment.

In this exploratory study, we analyze co-authorship networks of collaborative cancer research in India. The complete network is constructed from bibliometric data on published scholarly articles indexed in two well-known electronic databases covering two 6-year windows from 2000 to 2005 and 2006 to 2011 inclusive. Employing a number of important metrics pertaining to the underlying topological structures of the network, we discusses implications for effective policies to enhance knowledge generation and sharing in cancer research in the country. With some modifications, our methods can be applied without difficulty to examine policy structure of related disciplines in other countries of the world.

This study explores to identify prominent institutes contributing to cancer research in India, major publication channels used and impact of highly cited papers on social media. Scopus citation database was used to extract the bibliographic data for the period 2003 to 2012. ‘Research articles’ and ‘Review papers’ were filtered out for analysis. Citations appeared in Scopus, Google Scholar and scores appeared on Altmetric Explorer (Altmetrics) are extracted for comparison. The impact of highly cited Indian cancer research papers on Altmetric Explorer is negligible. The Indian cancer research is widely spread and published in multidisciplinary channels. Major cancer research is produced by few premier research institutes and reflection of highly cited papers in social media is negligible. Results of the study give an insight of Indian cancer research scenario to researchers, clinicians, policy makers to identify prolific institutes for collaborations and devise better cancer controlling policies.

Making a case for cancer research in India

Challenges for cancer research in India: What's the way out?

This note presents a brief account of the ideas and efforts of V.R. Khanolkar in the period 1952-1962 to develop the Indian Cancer Research Centre into a "center of excellence". Khanolkar, who is recognized as a pioneer in cancer research in India, focused on developing multidisciplinary medical research and mentored and trained young medical researchers. He sought and received aid from the Rockefeller Foundation, which was keen to support him in this task.

Cancer is uncontrolled division of the cells and has to capability to evade central endogenous control mechanism and as result of this spread to the surrounding tissue. The accumulating knowledge about development and progression of cancer can be used to develop more precise diagnostic and more effective and or less toxic cancer therapies. It is the second leading cause of death worldwide. After cardiac disease cancer has emerged as an important cause of mortality and morbidity in India. In 2019 annual cases grew by 23.6 million and 10 million deaths worldwide. The article compiled with the objective to know regarding the challenges and opportunities in cancer research in India.

Cancer research in India: Challenges & opportunities

Priority areas of cancer research in India: the clinician’s perspective

Purpose – The aim of the present study is to analyze the literature growth, author productivity, authorship pattern, average length of articles and country collaboration of cancer research in India. The Indian Journal of Cancer, which shows the progress of ontological sciences in India, was established in 1963. Indian Journal of Cancer is the first and only periodical serving the needs of all the specialties of oncology in India. The journal is the official publication of the Indian Cancer Society and Indian Society of Oncology. Design/methodology/approach – Thirty-nine issues of the Indian Journal of Cancer, published between 2003 and 2012, have been considered for the study. The collected data were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet and analyzed to find the degree of collaboration (DC) between authors, collaboration between countries and authorship pattern. Since the journal publishes research articles, review articles, editorials, letters to the editor, symposiums, forewords, case reports and special articles, only the 244 research articles published during 2003-2012 have been taken into consideration in this study. Findings – The study revealed that multi-authored papers were more common and that the average length of articles was 5-6 pages. Twenty-two countries contributed papers to this journal during the study period. Additional research is needed to assess the impact of diverse dietary habits, religious practices and lifestyles on the prevention of cancer. Originality/value – More than 50 per cent of the world’s cancer burden, in terms of both numbers of cases and deaths, occurs in developing countries and is rising. By 2020, it is estimated that 70 per cent of all cancer cases will be in these lower-income countries, and approximately one-fifth of these will be in India, with its (still increasing) population of over a billion. While research is necessary to inform effective programs, it is also time to move beyond research to act by implementing programs in cancer prevention and treatment. Cancer is disturbing the growing economy of the country, which can be saved by proper handling of this disease.

Translational cancer research in India: Challenges and Promises.