Abstract
Simple SummaryThe study of cell features has historically been key for the progress of biological sciences and its relevance remains intact. In recent years, mass cytometry has emerged as a promising and powerful technology, capable of studying multiple parameters of cells in the same sample. Mass cytometry has been quickly applied to many research areas, particularly to the study of the immune system for different purposes, in which the simultaneous analysis of a large number of proteins is crucial. However, despite being a technique that is on the rise, its performance in scientific publications has not yet been evaluated. In this work, a bibliometric methodology known as H-Classics was applied to analyse the most relevant articles, known as highly cited papers (HCPs), and determine the main scientific producers (authors, institutions, and countries) and trends around mass cytometry research field. The results confirmed a high interest and application in immunological studies. The identified HCPs came from prestigious institutions and were published in high impact journals. These results may help researchers to expand their knowledge and to establish new valuable collaborative networks around mass cytometry.Mass cytometry (CyTOF) is a relatively novel technique for the multiparametric analysis of single-cell features with an increasing central role in cell biology, immunology, pharmacology, and biomedicine. This technique mixes the fundamentals of flow cytometry with mass spectrometry and is mainly used for in-depth studies of the immune system and diseases with a significant immune load, such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and viral diseases like HIV or the recently emerged COVID-19, produced by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The objective of this study was to provide a useful insight into the evolution of the mass cytometry research field, revealing the knowledge structure (conceptual and social) and authors, countries, sources, documents, and organizations that have made the most significant contribution to its development. We retrieved 937 articles from the Web of Science (2010–2019), analysed 71 Highly Cited Papers (HCP) through the H-Classics methodology and computed the data by using Bibliometrix R package. HCP sources corresponded to high-impact journals, such as Nature Biotechnology and Cell, and its production was concentrated in the US, and specifically Stanford University, affiliation of the most relevant authors in the field. HCPs analysis confirmed great interest in the study of the immune system and complex data processing in the mass cytometry research field.
Highlights
Studying a broad range of single-cell features has always been of great interest to both researchers and clinicians
The mass cytometry technology or cytometry by time of flight (CyTOF), is a relatively novel technique that was first described by Bandura et al, as an instrument for real-time analysis of individual biological cells or other microparticles [7]
The CyTOF constitutes a hybrid between flow cytometry and mass spectrometry
Summary
Studying a broad range of single-cell features has always been of great interest to both researchers and clinicians. This purpose has been partly fulfilled by flow-cytometry technology [1]. The ions arrive at the detector in an ion mass-dependent manner, which enables the differentiation of single-cell parameters. For analysing this information, the detector is coupled to a time of flight analyser (TOF), from where the data is acquired and subsequently processed [8,9]. Due to the high availability of different metallic particles, mass cytometry allows the study of more than 40 different parameters simultaneously in the same sample [6]
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