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Simplifying synthesis of the expanding glioblastoma literature: a topic modeling approach

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Abstract

Purpose

Our study aims to discover the leading topics within glioblastoma (GB) research, and to examine if these topics have “hot” or “cold” trends. Additionally, we aim to showcase the potential of natural language processing (NLP) in facilitating research syntheses, offering an efficient strategy to dissect the landscape of academic literature in the realm of GB research.

Methods

The Scopus database was queried using “glioblastoma” as the search term, in the “TITLE” and “KEY” fields. BERTopic, an NLP-based topic modeling (TM) method, was used for probabilistic TM. We specified a minimum topic size of 300 documents and 5% probability cutoff for outlier detection. We labeled topics based on keywords and representative documents and visualized them with word clouds. Linear regression models were utilized to identify “hot” and “cold” topic trends per decade.

Results

Our TM analysis categorized 43,329 articles into 15 distinct topics. The most common topics were Genomics, Survival, Drug Delivery, and Imaging, while the least common topics were Surgical Resection, MGMT Methylation, and Exosomes. The hottest topics over the 2020s were Viruses and Oncolytic Therapy, Anticancer Compounds, and Exosomes, while the cold topics were Surgical Resection, Angiogenesis, and Tumor Metabolism.

Conclusion

Our NLP methodology provided an extensive analysis of GB literature, revealing valuable insights about historical and contemporary patterns difficult to discern with traditional techniques. The outcomes offer guidance for research directions, policy, and identifying emerging trends. Our approach could be applied across research disciplines to summarize and examine scholarly literature, guiding future exploration.

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Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Acknowledgements

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The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Mount Sinai Health System, 1468 Madison Avenue, Annenberg 8-42, New York, NY, 10029, USA

    Mert Karabacak, Alejandro Carrasquilla, Isabelle M. Germano & Konstantinos Margetis

  2. School of Medicine, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, New York, NY, 11203, USA

    Pemla Jagtiani

  3. School of Medicine, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, 10595, USA

    Ankita Jain

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  1. Mert Karabacak
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Contributions

Conceptualization, MK, and KM.; Methodology, MK and KM; Software, MK; Formal Analysis, MK; Data Curation, MK; Writing– Original Draft Preparation, MK, PJ, and AJ; Writing– Review & Editing, AC, IMG, and KM; Visualization, MK; Supervision, IMG, and KM; Project Administration, MK, and KM.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Konstantinos Margetis.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Authorship contribution

Conceptualization, MK, and KM.; Methodology, MK and KM; Software, MK; Formal Analysis, MK; Data Curation, MK; Writing– Original Draft Preparation, MK, PJ, and AJ; Writing– Review & Editing, AC, IMG, and KM; Visualization, MK; Supervision, IMG, and KM; Project Administration, MK, and KM.

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This study did not require Institutional Review Board approval as it involved analyzing publicly available academic literature without human participants or personal data.

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Karabacak, M., Jagtiani, P., Carrasquilla, A. et al. Simplifying synthesis of the expanding glioblastoma literature: a topic modeling approach. J Neurooncol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-024-04762-8

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