Antimicrobial PDT in South America

Researchers all over the world have turned their attention to find novel antibiotics and non-antibiotic-based alternatives to fight infections caused by resistant bacteria. Among the alternatives, antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) has gained attention due to its non-specific nature of killing, which is unlikely to induce new forms of resistance due mainly to its broad spectrum of action. Most research groups working in aPDT are based in the North and South Americas, and Brazil leads this research field, accounting for 26% of all the aPDT publications in the world, 55% of the Americas and more than 95% of the publications in South America alone. As far as the databases show, aPDT is the only research topic in which Brazil publishes more papers than any other country in the world. Brazilian researchers have been contributing extensively to unveil molecular mechanisms of aPDT, developing treatment protocols for oral, dermatologic and veterinary infections, and to improve and optimize the technique so it can finally become a clinical reality. However, if one analyses the average citation per paper, one will find that Brazilian papers, although abundant, receive fewer citations than almost all other countries in the top 10. This finding is not specific to this area of research since other scientometric studies have shown the same profile in many other research areas. The low global impact of Brazilian – and South America’s - research might be due to the immaturity of our community and/or unfamiliarity or lack of access to techniques that can help improve the robustness of the work. Therefore, collaborations among aPDT groups can be of the utmost importance in increasing the impact of science in South America. In this paper, we cover the numbers of South America’s research and provide a full network list to encourage scientific collaborations.