Disease Milestones through Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Cited Articles in Multiple Myeloma

A bibliometric analysis of the 100 most-cited articles on curcumin

Background: Extensive studies related to curcumin were carried out over the preceding several decades. Citation frequencies represent the most prominent contributions in a specific field. This research aimed to identify and analyze the 100 most-cited articles on curcumin and to highlight the most important advances in this field.

Methods: Highly cited articles were identified in the Web of Science core collection database. “curcumin*” was used as the search string to retrieve in the “Title” field. VOSviewer was applied to perform bibliometric analysis of these papers.

Results: Totally 17,645 publications on the topic of curcumin were identified. The top most-cited 100 articles were published between 1973 and 2017. Most of these papers were original (n = 62). The total citation frequency in the top 100 article ranged from 355 to 3364, with a median of 560. The United States and India were the major countries researching curcumin. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was the institution with the highest contribution rate of these articles. The most frequently nominated authors were Aggarwal B. B., Kunnumakkara A. B., Prasad S., and Priyadarsini K. I. The top 100 articles were published in 68 journals. The top four journals in terms of the number of our included articles were Cancer Research (n = 7), followed by Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemical Pharmacology, and Cancer Letters, with 4 articles each. NF-kappa B, cancer, gene expression, apoptosis, inflammation, chemopreventive agent, and nitric oxide synthase are presumed to be the current hot topics. Bioavailability, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activities were the major research directions of curcumin.

Conclusion: This study analyzed the 100 most-cited articles on curcumin and provided insights into the characteristics and research hotspots of the articles on this topic.

The 100 Most-Cited and Influential Articles in Collegiate Athletics

Background

Bibliometric citation analyses have been widely used in medicine to help researchers gain foundational knowledge about a topic and identify subtopics of popular interest for further investigations. There is a lack of similar research in collegiate athletics.

Purpose

To identify the 100 most-cited research publications related to collegiate athletics.

Study Design

Cross-sectional study.

Methods

The Clarivate Analytics Web of Knowledge database was used to generate a list of articles relating to collegiate athletics on January 24, 2022. Articles were filtered by the total number of citations, and the 100 most-cited articles were selected. For each article, we identified and analyzed the following: author name, publication year, country of origin, journal name, article type, main research topic area, competitive level, sex of study population, and level of evidence.

Results

Of the top 100 most-cited articles, 63 were related to medicine. In total, 96% of articles were published in the United States, and 80% were published in the year 2000 or later. Of the top 100 articles, 85 were observational; only 5 were experimental. The sport most represented was soccer, followed by football, baseball, and basketball. Of the top 100 articles, 21 were published in a single journal, the American Journal of Sports Medicine. Ten authors published ≥5 of the top 100 most-cited studies.

Conclusion

The majority of top 100 articles were published in the United States after 1999 and primarily focused on medicine-related topics. Soccer was studied by more articles than football, baseball, and basketball. An author's prestige may have influenced the likelihood of citation. The top 100 most-cited studies provide researchers, medical students, residents, and fellows with a foundational list of the most important and influential academic contributions to the literature on collegiate athletics.

Characterization of the Therapeutic Effects of Novel Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells Targeting CD38 on Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a tumor type characterized by the unregulated proliferation of clonal plasma cells in the bone marrow. Immunotherapy based on chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy has achieved exciting success in the treatment of hematological malignant tumors. CD38 is highly and evenly expressed in MM and is an attractive target for MM treatment. Here, we successfully constructed two novel second-generation CAR-T cells targeting CD38 by retroviral vector transduction. CD38 CAR-T cells could be activated effectively after stimulation with CD38-positive tumor cells and secrete cytokines such as IFN-γ and TNF-α to promote tumor cell apoptosis in in vitro experiments. Real-time fluorescence monitoring experiments, luciferase detection experiments and flow cytometry experiments revealed the efficient and specific killing abilities of CD38 CAR-T cells against CD38-positive tumor cells. The proliferation ability of CD38 CAR-T cells in vitro was higher than that of untransduced T cells. Further antitumor experiments in vivo showed that CD38 CAR-T cells could be quickly activated to secrete IFN-γ and eliminate tumors. Thus, novel CD38-targeted second-generation CAR-T cells have efficient and specific antitumor activity and may become a novel therapy for the clinical treatment of MM.

Efficacy of Humanized Anti-BCMA CAR T Cell Therapy in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma Patients With and Without Extramedullary Disease

In recent years, many new treatments for relapsed/refractory (R/R) multiple myeloma (MM) have improved patient prognosis, but the prognosis of patients with extramedullary MM is still particularly poor. Therefore, more efficacious therapies and novel strategies are urgently needed for these patients. The aim of this study was to observe and compare the efficacy and safety of humanized anti-B cell maturation antigen (anti-BCMA) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy in R/R MM patients with and without extramedullary disease. Seven R/R MM patients with extramedullary disease and 13 without extramedullary disease received humanized anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy. The overall response rate was not different between patients with and without extramedullary disease. There was no difference in the progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival (OS) rates between the two groups at 180 days, but the PFS and OS rates in patients with extramedullary disease were lower at 360 days than those in patients without extramedullary disease. Although some patients with extramedullary disease experienced further disease progression, their M protein level did not increase. We did not see this change trend of M protein in patients without extramedullary disease. However, this was not observed in patients without extramedullary disease. Among patients who responded to CAR T cell therapy, the grades of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and immune effector cell-associated neurotoxic syndrome (ICANS) were much higher among patients with extramedullary disease. In summary, R/R MM patients with extramedullary disease could benefit from humanized anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy in the short term, although the CRS and ICANS grades were much higher in patients with extramedullary disease. Therefore, anti-BCMA CAR T cell therapy allows for a remission time for R/R MM patients with extramedullary disease, which could be maintained by bridging hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, radiotherapy, and other therapies.

Clinical Trial Registration

http://www.chictr.org.cn/index.aspx, identifiers ChiCTR1800017051 and ChiCTR2000033925.

CAR-T Cells Based on Novel BCMA Monoclonal Antibody Block Multiple Myeloma Cell Growth

The cell-surface protein B cell maturation antigen (BCMA, CD269) has emerged as a promising target for CAR-T cell therapy for multiple myeloma. In order to create a novel BCMA CAR, we generated a new BCMA monoclonal antibody, clone 4C8A. This antibody exhibited strong and selective binding to human BCMA. BCMA CAR-T cells containing the 4C8A scFv were readily detected with recombinant BCMA protein by flow cytometry. The cells were cytolytic for RPMI8226, H929, and MM1S multiple myeloma cells and secreted high levels of IFN-γ in vitro. BCMA-dependent cytotoxicity and IFN-γ secretion were also observed in response to CHO (Chinese Hamster Ovary)-BCMA cells but not to parental CHO cells. In a mouse subcutaneous tumor model, BCMA CAR-T cells significantly blocked RPMI8226 tumor formation. When BCMA CAR-T cells were given to mice with established RPMI8226 tumors, the tumors experienced significant shrinkage due to CAR-T cell activity and tumor cell apoptosis. The same effect was observed with 3 humanized BCMA-CAR-T cells in vivo. These data indicate that novel CAR-T cells utilizing the BCMA 4C8A scFv are effective against multiple myeloma and warrant future clinical development.