Research on biologic therapy for Crohn’s disease grew steadily from 2015 through 2025, while the field’s emphasis shifted toward precision medicine and predictive modeling. The finding comes from a bibliometric analysis that maps the research landscape through its published record.
How the research map was built
To build the map, researchers searched PubMed, the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus for English-language publications covering 2015 to 2025. Eligible records included original research, meta-analyses, animal experiments, systematic reviews and reviews involving Crohn’s disease patients or animal models treated with at least one biologic.
The three databases returned 12,026, 1,848 and 8,667 records, respectively. After 6,572 duplicates were removed, 15,969 unique records remained; 141 were later excluded, leaving 15,828 eligible publications for analysis.
Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts. Disagreements were resolved through discussion or, after full-text assessment, adjudication by a third reviewer.
EndNote was used for duplicate detection. CiteSpace, R/RStudio, SCImago Graphica and VOSviewer were used to examine publication trends, collaboration, keyword co-occurrence, clusters, timelines and citation bursts. The analysis used one-year time slices and a Top N of 50 nodes per slice, with pathfinder pruning and cluster and timeline visualisation.
Where activity concentrated
Annual publication output showed a consistent upward trend across 2015 to 2025. Growth in the published record was the clearest broad pattern in the analysis.
The United States led the country rankings with 4,505 publications. China produced 1,528, Italy 1,509, Canada 1,284 and the United Kingdom 1,016; Germany, France, Spain, Japan and Belgium followed with 987, 969, 916, 626 and 593, respectively. Canada stood out for its network position: its centrality score was 0.93, and the analysis identified it as a critical intermediary.
The institutional network covered 268 institutions and 517 co-authorship links, with each link representing at least one collaborative publication.
The author network included 410 authors with sufficient activity. Peyrin-Biroulet, L, led the productivity list with 282 publications, followed by Danese, S, with 274. Colombel, JF, and Vermeire, S, followed with 204 and 188, respectively.
The themes began to move
The keyword map contained 832 nodes and 4,716 links. The most frequent terms included Crohn’s disease, with 11,007 occurrences; inflammatory bowel disease, 9,522; ulcerative colitis, 5,913; biological marker, 2,844; and biological product, 2,834.
Clustering grouped the keywords into 11 representative themes. The reported modularity score was 0.5991 and the mean silhouette score was 0.8053. These are checks on whether groups are distinct and internally coherent; under the study’s stated criteria, the results indicated a statistically significant, internally homogeneous cluster structure.
Keyword-burst analysis identified 25 strong bursts, or periods when specific terms surged in the literature. The pattern described a shift from efficacy validation and surgical-outcome topics toward precision medicine and predictive modeling.
A map of priorities, not patient outcomes
The authors interpret that shift as a move from efficacy validation toward biomarker-driven stratification and comparative effectiveness. They propose individualized sequencing, head-to-head comparisons between biologics and small-molecule agents, and more evidence in adolescents and pregnant women.
Those priorities are not clinical results from this analysis. Because the study maps publication activity, it cannot establish whether individualized sequencing improves patient outcomes or whether one treatment is better than another. The burst analysis shows when themes surged, not why, and the search was limited to English-language records in three databases.
Paper data and sources
Original title: Biologic therapy for Crohn’s disease (2015–2025): a bibliometric analysis of global research trends and current status
Authors: Zhou P, Pan H, Wei M et al.
Journal/Repository: Frontiers in pharmacology
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-10-07
DOI: Not available
Original paper · Full text