Examining between-sectors knowledge transfer in the pharmacology field

Abstract

Understanding knowledge transfer patterns is essential in providing valuable insights for shaping innovations and supporting economic growth. Our study identifies the main contributors and patterns of knowledge transfer within the pharmacology field from 2000 to 2019 by analyzing citation linkage and collaborative information between sector categories, affiliated institutions, and biomedical entities in articles from the Web of Science database. Our main contribution is mapping the knowledge transfer flow and identifying the main contributors to knowledge transfer within the pharmacology domain. We manually categorized affiliated institutions into four sector categories to observe knowledge transfer patterns. Subsequently, we performed a citation linkage analysis at three levels: sector categories, institution names, and biomedical entities. The results show that academic institutions are the most significant contributors to knowledge transfer in the pharmacology field, followed by commercial and government institutions. Although the majority of knowledge transfers originated from academic institutions, our study uncovered notable transfers from commercial to academic sectors and from government to academic sectors. Through named entity analysis on diseases, drugs, and genes, we found that research in the pharmacology field predominantly concentrates on subjects pertaining to cancers, chronic diseases, and neurodegenerative disorders.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Fig. 12.

Fig. 12

Our data architecture

Appendix 2

See Table 4

Table 4 Sample data from the collection

Appendix 3

See Table 5

Table 5 Author and affiliation information related to article “WOS:000445634300001”

Appendix 4

See Table 6

Table 6 Sample of labeling results using all authors’ affiliations

Appendix 5

Table 7 Top thirty entities based on citation numbers

In Table 7 in Appendix 5, our analysis revealed necrosis in top-cited disease entities besides cancer-related and chronic diseases. Necrosis is when death cells occur due to injuries or exposure to extreme conditions. Previous work explained that a lack of oxygen and interrupted blood supply could cause cell malfunction and necrosis (Conrad et al., 2016). Treatments can slow the disease’s progress in avascular necrosis cases, but no cure exists. It is also a potential side effect of drug consumption that needs to be suppressed (Mailloux et al., 2001). Therefore, concerns and work on finding solutions to treat necrosis have recently increased. We found about 11,757 documents from the academic sector (published in 2000–2019) containing the term “necrosis,” 2173 from the commercial, 1980 from the government, and 226 from the other sector. As for institutions, universities from the Asian continent have published more documents on necrosis, and Pfizer has the highest number of publications mentioning necrosis among pharmaceutical companies.

Among drug entities, oxygen and nitric oxide were the two most-cited substances based on reference information from 2000 to 2019 (Table 7 in Appendix 5). Both substances are therapeutic agents that can elevate blood oxygen levels. According to data from Clinicaltrials.gov, several trials have used nitric oxide and glutathione to run experiments for various purposes. Meanwhile, we usually find the application of oxygen for treatment purposes in targeted therapies. Targeted therapy is a treatment that uses drugs or other substances to identify and attack specific types of cancer cells. Based on data from 2000 to 2019, 16,031 documents from the academic sector mentioned “oxygen,” 3304 documents from the government, 1654 documents from the commercial, and 760 from the other sector. For “nitric oxide,” there are 13,610 documents from the academic sector, 2136 documents from the government, 761 from the commercial, and 155 from the other sector. Although institutions from the academic sector overlooked institutions from other sectors, GlaxoSmithKline, one of the big pharmaceutical companies, published significant numbers of documents mentioning “oxygen” and “nitric oxide.”

We found that entities in the gene column (Table 7 in Appendix 5) are primarily associated with cancers. Previous works explained the relatedness of the WWOX gene with several cancer types, but it is still unclear if its mutations directly implicate cancerogenesis or secondary effects (Aqeilan et al., 2004; Kuroki et al., 2004). Based on our collections, 27,024 documents from the academic sector mentioned the “WWOX gene,” 10,693 documents from the commercial, 5040 from the government, and 2496 from the other sector. Unlike the previous two entity types (drug and disease), we found more documents from the commercial sector with top-cited gene entities. Big pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck & Co., and GlaxoSmithKline, had more publications related to the WWOX gene, even compared to institutions from the academic sector.