According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 29,000 patients are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer annually, and pancreatic cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. This month, Special Topics examines pancreatic cancer research over the past decade and over the past two years.

The most-cited papers of the past decade focus on pancreatic cancer genetics, as showcased in the #1 paper, "DPC4, a candidate tumor suppressor gene at human chromosome 18q21.1" (Hahn SA et al., Science 271[5247]: 350-3, 19 January 1996). Dr. Scott Kern talks about this paper and its importance to the field in his interview here. Other topics highly cited in the past 10 years include TGF-beta signaling pathways, cyclooxygenase-2 expression, epidermal growth factor receptor signaling, BRCA2 gene mutations, the risk conveyed by hereditary pancreatitis, the potential of NSAIDS as chemoprevention, and the results of trials examining curative resection and therapy with gemcitabine.

The two-year data appears to focus much more on treatment options, with papers detailing trial results using cetuximab plus gemcitabine, tipifamib plus gemcitabine, oxaliplatin plus gemcitabine, irinotecan plus gemcitabine, and CI-1040. Other topics garnering citation attention over the past two years include serum diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, studies determining patient outcome and survival, high-resolution characterization of the pancreatic cancer genome, CEACAM6 gene silencing, genomic DNA chip hybridization, and the effects of radiation to stromal fibroblasts on cancer cell invasiveness.

Methodology

To construct this database, papers were extracted based on title-supplied keywords for Pancreatic Cancer. The keywords used were as follows: 

"pancreatic cancer*" OR pancrea* AND neoplasm OR pancrea* AND tumor OR pancrea* AND cancer OR pancrea* AND carcinoma* OR pancrea* AND adenocarcinoma* OR pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma* OR pancreatobiliary carcinoma OR pancrea* AND biliary cancer* OR pancreatic intraepithelial neoplas* OR pancrea* AND malignan* OR DPC*

The baseline time span for this database is 1996-October 31, 2006. The resulting database contained 6,177 (10 years) and 1,828 (2 years) papers; 18,892 authors; 63 countries; 745 journals; and 3,486 institutions.

Rankings

Once the database was in place, it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers (two- and ten-year periods), authors, journals, institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1996-October 31, 2006 (fifth bimonthly, a 10-year plus 10-month period).

The top 20 papers are ranked according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds and corresponding percentages used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper, and total papers respectively are as follows:

Entity:	Scientists	Institutions	Countries	Journals
Thresholds:	16	46	10	20
Percentage:	1%	1%	50%	10%

Return to previous page