Hot Spots and Trends of Research on Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells: A Bibliometric Analysis

Background: Emerging studies have focused on human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) owing to the potential applications in the treatment of a wide range of diseases. This study was carried out to assess the research status and explore the hotspots and trends regarding hUC-MSCs using bibliometric methods. Methods: Publications on hUC-MSCs were retrieved from the PubMed database. Then, we used Bibliographic Item Co-occurrence Matrix Builder to build the term-source and co-occurrence matrices by analyzing and identifying highly frequent MeSH terms. Biclustering analysis was next performed using the gCLUTO software. Mountain visualization and matrix visualization were used to present the clustering results. Finally, to evaluate the status and trends of each cluster, we plotted a strategic diagram based on the co-word analysis. Results: According to the selection criteria, a total of 2671 articles on hUC-MSCs were included. In the extracted MeSH terms, the researchers identified 31 high frequency MeSH terms. The results of subsequent biclustering analysis revealed 3 clusters and 8 hotspots of hUC-MSCs research. As for the strategic diagram, the role and position of each cluster were displayed by centrality and density. Studies on methods of culture and separation of hUC-MSCs as well as heterogeneity of human mesenchymal stem cells were well-developed. On the contrary, characterization of hUC-MSCs, methods and therapeutic potentials of umbilical cord stem cells transplantation, methods and promising applications of hUC-MSCs in tissue engineering were at the cutting edge of hUC-MSCs research. Conclusion: The fields of hUC-MSCs have broader application prospects in clinical applications, especially for diseases that are not clinically curable, such as immune system diseases and metabolic diseases. However, high treatment costs are a huge challenge, so how to reduce treatment costs will be a focus of future research.