Global research trends of tumor microenvironment in non-small cell lung cancer with epidermal growth factor receptor mutation: a bibliometric analysis from 2014 to 2023.

Purpose: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer, and about half of the patients had mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene. Changes in the tumor microenvironment after EGFR mutation are closely related to tumor progression and treatment efficacy.

Materials and methods: We searched the Web of Science Core Collection database to select the articles related to tumor microenvironment in non-small cell lung cancer with epidermal growth factor receptor mutation. The countries/regions, institutes, authors, journals, references, and keywords were visualized and analyzed.

Results: 227 relevant studies were obtained from WoSCC. These articles came from 102 countries and 1179 institutions. After network analysis, it was found that the intensity of USA cooperation with China was the greatest (LS=13), followed by cooperation with South Korea (LS=3) and with Japan (LS=3). A total of 2267 authors participated the all 227 articles. 112 journals were covered, and Frontiers in Oncology published most papers (n=16, 14.3%). A total of 7964 co-cited references are related to TME in NSCLC with EGFR mutation. "EGFR" is the keyword with the highest centrality (C=0.31) and first appeared. The keywords that burst in the last 1 year (2022-2023) are "immunotherapy", "mechanism", "lung neoplasms", "T cells", and "multicenter".

Conclusion: Effective drug treatment of advanced NSCLC with EGFR mutations after failure of first-line chemotherapy is one of the hotspots, in which the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors may be the direction of the current and future studies that need to find a breakthrough.