Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer years of life lost and is associated with the highest economic burden relative to other tumour types. Research remains at the cornerstone of achieving improved outcomes from lung cancer. We present the results of a comprehensive analysis of global lung cancer research between 2004 and 2013 (10 years) METHODS: The study used bibliometrics to undertake a quantitative analysis of research outputs in the 24 leading cancer research countries internationally, based on articles and reviews in the Web of Science (WoS) database.
A total of 32,161 lung cancer research papers from 2,085 different journals were analysed. Lung cancer research represented only 5.6% of overall cancer research in 2013, a 1.2% increase since 2004. The commitment to lung cancer research has fallen in most countries, apart from China, and shows no correlation with lung cancer burden. A review of key research types demonstrated that diagnostics, screening and quality of life research represent 4.3%, 1.8% and 0.3% of total lung cancer research respectively. The leading research types were genetics (20%), systemic therapies (17%) and prognostic biomarkers (16%). Research outputs are increasingly basic science with a fall in clinical translational research output over this time period.
Our findings have established that relative to the huge health, social and economic burden associated with lung cancer, the level of world research output lags significantly behind that of other malignancies. Commitment to diagnostics, screening and quality of life research is much lower compared to basic science and medicines research. The study findings are expected to provide the requisite intelligence to guide future cancer research programs in lung cancer.
Copyright © 2016 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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