
==== Front
Hum Vaccin Immunother
Hum Vaccin Immunother
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
2164-5515
2164-554X
Taylor & Francis

10.1080/21645515.2024.2376864
2376864
Version of Record
Letter to the Editor
Immunotherapy - Cancer
Comment on “Bidirectional crosstalk between the epithelial-mesenchymal transition and immunotherapy: A bibliometric study”
S. CHEN ET AL.
HUMAN VACCINES & IMMUNOTHERAPEUTICS
Chen Shupeng a
Tang Nana b
Zeng Yingjian b
a School of Clinical Medicine, Jiangxi University of Chinese Medicine , Nanchang, China
b Hematology Department, Affiliated Hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine , Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
CONTACT Yingjian Zeng tcmdrc2023@outlook.com Hematology Department, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Affiliated Hospital, Nanchang 330006, China.
5 9 2024
2024
5 9 2024
20 1 2376864Integra30 8 2024
Integra30 8 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
2024
The Author(s)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

National Natural Science Foundation of China 10.13039/501100001809 82260914 This work has been supported and funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China project [82260914], the Jiangxi Provincial Natural Science Foundation project [20192BAB205108], and the Jiangxi Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinical Research Base Construction Project (Gan Traditional Chinese Medicine Education Letter [2021] No. 3).
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pmcTo the editor

We recently conducted an in-depth study of the article titled “Bidirectional crosstalk between the epithelial-mesenchymal transition and immunotherapy: A bibliometric study” by Wei Du et al., published in Hum Vaccin Immunother. This study1 provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the research progress, disciplinary evolution, and development trends in the field of EMT-immunotherapy. The authors identified “Immune infiltration,” “bioinformatics analysis,” “traditional Chinese medicine,” “gene signature,” and “ferroptosis” as promising research directions in EMT-immunotherapy. We also believe that TCM holds significant potential in modulating immunotherapy for tumors and thus have supplemented the current research status of TCM in this field. Research has found that Huangjing polysaccharides2 can inhibit EMT by regulating the tumor microenvironment, and Gancao Ganjiang decoction3 can regulate the PD-1/TGF - β 1/IL-17A pathway to inhibit EMT and alleviate pulmonary fibrosis.We hope this will inspire more researchers to explore the potential of TCM.

Initially, we followed the authors’ search strategy in the Web of Science (WOS) database, adding TCM-related keywords. However, we obtained a limited number of analyzable documents. Therefore, we expanded the research scope and searched for three topics: TCM, immunotherapy, and tumors. A total of 779 articles were retrieved. We analyzed the temporal and spatial distribution of these articles, as shown in the attached figure. From the temporal distribution, the number of articles has been rapidly increasing from 2005 to 2023. To more accurately predict future trends, we plotted a polynomial fit curve,4 showing an exponential growth in the field, with a coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.9504) indicating that the model explains 95.04% of the data variability, which is highly referential. The image illustrates the temporal, spatial, and thematic distribution characteristics of literature in the field of immunomodulatory research in traditional Chinese medicine. The temporal distribution characteristics are visualized using RStudio (R package bibliometrix) and Excel. The spatial distribution characteristics are depicted using Tableau Public. The keyword bubble chart is created using Carrot 2.

Geographically, the research is predominantly conducted in China, South Korea, and the United States, with studies spanning 49 countries/regions worldwide. Thematically, “TCM extracts, “gene expression regulation,” “CD8T cells,” “inflammation,” “immune response,” “mRNA,” and “NF-κB pathway” are hot topics in TCM-mediated tumor immunotherapy research.

Additionally, we suggest that the authors emphasize the visualization analysis of co-authorship networks, further examining the institutional and national affiliations of author teams.5 This is crucial for exploring interdisciplinary collaboration and international exchanges in this field. We believe that the authors study provides constructive references for future EMT-immunotherapy research, and our supplement on TCM will further inspire researchers’ interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions statement

Shupeng Chen: A doctoral student at the Clinical Medical College of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, specializing in the basic and clinical research of traditional Chinese medicine treatment for hematological diseases.

Nana Tang: A professor and Doctor of Medicine at the Affiliated Hospital of Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, specializing in the treatment of internal medicine diseases with traditional Chinese medicine.

Yingjian Zeng organized and designed the manuscript. data cleaning, and figure plotting were conducted by Shupeng Chen. The manuscript was drafted by Shupeng Chen and reviewed and verified by Nana Tang.

Data availability statement

The datasets used during the present study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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References

1. Du W, Tang Z, Du A, Yang Q, Xu R. Bidirectional crosstalk between the epithelial-mesenchymal transition and immunotherapy: a bibliometric study. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2024;20 (1 ):2328403. doi:10.1080/21645515.2024.2328403.38502119
2. Xu Y, Guo Y, Lu C, Yu L, Fang C, Li C. Polygonatum sibiricum polysaccharide inhibited liver cancer in a simulated tumor microenvironment by eliminating TLR4/STAT3 pathway. Biol Pharm Bull. 2023;46 (9 ):1249–3. doi:10.1248/bpb.b23-00198.37661404
3. Wang D, Gong L, Li Z, Chen H, Xu M, Rong R, Zhang Y, Zhu Q. Antifibrotic effect of gancao ganjiang decoction is mediated by PD-1/TGF-β1/IL-17A pathway in bleomycin-induced idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. J Ethnopharmacol. 2021;281 :114522. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2021.114522.34391863
4. Guo SB, Du S, Cai KY, Cai H-J, Huang W-J, Tian X-P. A scientometrics and visualization analysis of oxidative stress modulator Nrf2 in cancer profiles its characteristics and reveals its association with immune response. Heliyon. 2023;9 (6 ):e17075. doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e17075.37342570
5. Wu Z, Chen S, Wang Y, Li F, Xu H, Li M, Zeng Y, Wu Z, Gao Y. Current perspectives and trend of computer-aided drug design: a review and bibliometric analysis. Int J Surg. 2024;110 (6 ):3848–78. doi:10.1097/JS9.0000000000001289.38502850
