The research landscape and future of targeting super-enhancers for cancer therapy: a bibliometric analysis

TL;DR

This paper maps the research landscape of super-enhancer-targeted cancer therapy and identifies emerging areas like enhancer RNA to guide future studies.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of SE-targeted cancer research, highlighting new frontiers such as enhancer RNA and drug resistance.

Findings

The United States and China lead research in SE-targeted cancer therapy.

Emerging research themes include enhancer RNA and drug resistance.

The field is shifting from basic biology to translational therapeutic strategies.

Abstract

Super-enhancers are specialized transcriptional regulatory elements pivotal for establishing and maintaining cell identity. Since their identification in 2013, SEs have garnered considerable attention as promising therapeutic targets in oncology. However, despite substantial progress, the molecular mechanisms and translational potential of SE-targeted strategies are not fully systematized, necessitating a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to map the intellectual landscape and guide future research.

We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 928 publications (2013–2024) from the Web of Science Core Collection using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and R. The study employed co-occurrence, co-citation and cluster analysis to profile the research landscape, identifying leading contributors, influential works, and conceptual themes. Temporal analysis and burst detection were further applied to track evolution and pinpoint emerging frontiers in super enhancer-targeted cancer therapy.

The intellectual architecture is dominated by the United States and China, with Harvard Medical School and Shanghai Jiao Tong University as pivotal institutions and Young Richard A. as the most influential author. Temporal mapping revealed a progression from core themes like “gene expression” and “selective inhibition” to contemporary foci on “drug resistance” and the nascent frontier of “enhancer RNA”, signaling a collective shift from basic biology to therapeutic innovation.

This study consolidates a decade of progress in super enhancer-targeted cancer therapy, mapping its evolution from mechanistic discovery to translational ambition. By pinpointing emergent frontiers such as enhancer RNA, our analysis provides a strategic roadmap to guide future research and accelerate the clinical translation of super enhancer-directed strategies, ultimately aiming to overcome persistent therapeutic barriers such as drug resistance in oncology.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12672-026-04471-w.

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