ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1607240
This article is part of the Research TopicNanotechnology-Based Delivery Systems for Cancer TreatmentView all 5 articles
Hydrogels in cancer treatment: mapping the future of precision drug delivery
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jiangsu College of Nursing, Huai'an, China
- 2Department of Clinical Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
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Current primary tumor treatments include curative resection, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. However, these conventional methods lack precise drug delivery. Hydrogels, adaptable to the biological characteristics of different tumors, offer potential as drug delivery systems and represent a significant area of research in tumor treatment.In this study, we aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis to reveal the current progress and future prospects of hydrogels for drug delivery in cancer. A total of 4108 publications were collected from 664 journals. Publications concerning hydrogels in tumor drug delivery were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database. Data regarding countries/regions, institutions, journals, authors, and document types were collected. Bibliometric analysis and network visualization were performed using CiteSpace, HisCite, VOSviewer, Alluvial Generator, and R software. A total of 4108 publications, spanning 98 scientific categories and published in 664 journals between 2000 and 2024, were identified. China, the United States, and India were the leading contributing countries. Of the 98 relevant categories, 94 experienced citation bursts between 2000 and 2024. The research team led by Professor Pourmadadi Mehrab demonstrated substantial influence in this field. The International Journal of Biological Macromolecules was the most prolific journal. The top three emergent categories originated in 2020 or later, are "Chemistry, Applied", "Engineering, Environmental", and "Biochemistry & Molecular Biology". "Designing hydrogels for controlled drug delivery" was the most highly cited article. Recent emergent keywords included immunotherapy, immunogenic cell death, carboxymethyl cellulose, and antibacterial. Key concept alluvial flow visualization revealed six terms: peritoneal carcinomatosis, iron oxide nanoparticles, drug delivery, release kinetics, carbon dots, and pathway. Nano-composite hydrogels, immunotherapy, quercetin, pancreatic cancer, and oral cancer exhibited recent activity within the cited article timeline, suggesting these areas as potential future research hotspots. This bibliometric analysis identifies future research directions within the developing field of hydrogels for drug delivery in cancer. This study provides recommendations and directions for the development of hydrogels as tumor drug delivery systems.
Keywords: Hydrogels, Cancer, Drug delivery, Bibliometrics, CiteSpace 2 Methods 2.1 Data collection and strategies
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Zhou, Yang, Wu, Chen, Wang and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiang Liu, Jiangsu College of Nursing, Huai'an, China
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