| Received | : | Mar 15, 2018 |
| Accepted | : | Jul 05, 2018 |
| Published Online | : | Jul 10, 2018 |
| Journal | : | Chronicles of Oncology |
| Publisher | : | MedDocs Publishers LLC |
| Online edition | : | http://meddocsonline.org |
Cite this article: Perez-Santos M, Anaya-Ruiz M. Global patent landscape in breast cancer metástasis. Chronicles Oncol. 2018; 2: 1006.
Objective: To analyse multi-source data patents, and try to draw the whole landscape of the research and development community in the field of breast cancer metastasis.
Materials and Methods: Patents were collect from databases of the top five patent offices of the world. Patentometric methodologies are used to investigate patents, their contents and relationships.
Result: 6574 patents from 1998 to 2017 including “breast cancer metastasis” were retrieve. The top five countries in global publication and patents share were USA, Australia, China, Germany, and South Korea. The universities and enterprises of USA had the highest amount of patents.
Conclusion: The above results show that global research in the field of breast cancer metastasis is increasing and the main participants in this field are USA and Canada in America, China, Japan and South Korea in Asia, and Germany, England, and France in Europe, and Australia in Oceania. In addition, this article demonstrates the usefulness of patentometrics to address key evaluation questions and define future areas of research.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, with 1.7 million new cases annually and 520,000 deaths globally [1], and metastasis to distant organs is responsible for ~90% of this death. Metastasis is the process by which breast cancer cells spread from the primary tumor to establish colonization at distant organs, such as the bone, lung, liver, and brain. It has been estimated that 85% of patients develop metastasis of bone [2], while 60-70%, 50% and 15-35% develop metastasis to lung [3], liver [4] and brain [5], respectively.
Extensive research has been conducted to solve the problem of breast cancer, but the metastasis solution still remains uncertain. Faced with this dilemma, scientific research evaluation has as purpose monitoring of ongoing research initiatives to assess the efficiency and effectiveness with which they are being implemented, and to determine the extent to which they are achieving their targeted objectives, and to recommend adjustments. Recently, publications trend on breast cancer-originated metastasis was determined; t is notable that the publications trend concerning bone metastasis was above the trend of lung metastasis, whereas the trends of liver and brain metastasis were very similar [6]. It is also important to emphasize that in the last years the production of research publications tries to fulfill the magnitude of the problem.
However, trends regarding patents on metastasis in breast cancer have not been addressed. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify recent patents of breast cancer metastasis that may have application in improving cancer treatment. In addition, a list of the most cited patents in this area is provided.
We used a keyword search approach to identity the “breast cancer metastasis”- related patents data from patent’s databases from United State Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office, State Intellectual Property Office of the People Republic of China, Japan Patent Office, Korean Intellectual Property Office and World Intellectual Property Office. In order to approximate the overall number of patent on breast cancer metastasis, the following search strategy was employed in the Title/Abstract/Claims of the patent document: (metast* ) AND [(breast invasive ductal carcinoma) OR (infiltrating duct carcinoma$) OR (mammary ductal carcinoma$) OR (breast cancer) OR (breast neoplasm$) OR (breast tumo$r$) OR (human mammary neoplasm$) OR (human mammary carcinoma$)]; where$ = any character* = two or more character. Document information included numbers of years of publication, citation, jurisdictions countries, inventors, institutes and enterprises. The records were downloaded using Microsoft Excel software, and additional coding was manually performed for the above fields.
6574 patent family documents from 1998 to 2017 including “breast cancer metastasis” were counted (Figure 1). A development trend was found for items published, which increased from 38 in 1998 to 663 patents in 2017. The global patent share of top 10 most productive countries in breast cancer metastasis is shown in Table 1, with USA occupying the first rank and contributing the largest patent share (2597), followed by Australia (1031), China (196), Germany (111), and South Korea (91). It should be noted that all countries, with the exception of Germany and Canada, grew every five years.
Table 1
Table 1: Top ten countries with patents on breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
Figure 1: Patent trend distribution analysis based in breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
Additionally, Figure 2 shows the top ten of patent applicants. With the exception of Nerviano Medical Sciences (Italy) and Novartis (Switzerland), all the assignees are from the United States. Four are universities (University of Texas, University of California, University Johns Hopkins and Dana Farber Cancer Intitute) and one is a government entity (US Health). Likewise, top ten inventors are shown in Figure 3; with the exception of Sui Yi Kwok and Bing Lou Wong (both from Taiwan) all the inventors are from the United States. Flynn Daniel and Michael Kaufman work in Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, and Carl Illig, Jinsheng Cheng, Shelley Ballentine, Sanath Meegalla, Renee Desjarlais and Mark Wall work in Janssen Pharmaceutica.
Figure 2: Top ten of applicants with patents on breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
Figure 3: Top ten of inventors with patents on breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
On the other hand, main International Patent Clasification codes on breast cancer metastasis are shown in Table 2. Two IPC codes (A61P35/00 and A61P35/04) were relevant for drugs based on chemical compounds; one IPC code (A61K39/395) was relevant for oncology immunotherapy; and one IPC code (C12Q1/68) was relevant for testing processes involving nucleic acids.
Table 2
Table 2: Main International Patent Clasification codes on breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
The Table 3 shown the twenty top patents with the highest number of citations on breast cancer metastasis. Interestingly, of the twenty most cited patents twelve are chemical compounds, two of micro-RNA therapy, and one of immunotherapy. It also highlights that eight patents present protein kinases as targets for drugs.
Table 3
Table 3: Twenty main patents with the highest number of citations on breast cancer metastasis, 1998-2017.
Breast cancer research evaluation allows answering questions related to the performance of research to determine the extent to which they are achieving their targeted objectives, and to recommend adjustments. This study analyzed patents in the field of breast cancer metastasis and some important points about the trend of research in this field were obtained. Our findings suggest a growing interest in the field of breast cancer metastasis as shown by the increased number of patent each year. USA, Australia, China, Germany and South Korea were the jurisdictions of most important countries in the subject. Likewise, US companies and their inventors were the most relevant. It should also be noted that, with few exceptions, US patents are among the most cited.
Since there are few studies that involve the subject of patents and breast cancer, a comparative analysis between countries and companies can not be carried out. However, since patents are generally linked to scientific publications, we can say that the behavior between countries in terms of patents is very similar to that of scientific publications. For example, there is one study in the field of breast cancer diet, which shows that the main participating countries, including the US, are consistent with ten of the present study [27]. Additionally, a study of reconstructive breast surgery research shows a match between the same countries groups obtained in our study [28]. Similarly, Ha., et al. shows that USA is the leader in articles published in the field of breast cancer imaging research [29]. The only study, to the knowledge of the author, that involves the behavior of different countries in terms of patents and breast cancer is that described by Anaya-Ruiz & Perez-Santos, which shows the behavior in patents about gene therapy in breast cancer [30]. This work represents the first patentometric assessment of breast cancer metastasis. The findings of this study should provide useful information for those who will be performing research and studying breast cancer metastasis and for prospective models in the study of breast cancer [31].
We thank the Mexican people for the support, through their taxes, provided for the development of this article.
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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