Bibliometrics Analysis of Butyrophilins as Immune Regulators [1992–2019] and Implications for Cancer Prognosis

The butyrophilins (BTNs) represent a unique family of immunoglobulin. They were considered to be involved in milk lactation after their discovery in 1981. With the development of research, an increasing number of research revealed that BTNs play important roles in immune regulation [1992–2019]. Our research aimed to summarize the BTN research status and their relationship with lung cancers and breast cancers by bibliometrics and bioinformatics methods. Our results indicate that the researches on immune-regulatory functions of BTNs gradually developed from 1992 to 2006, whereas they increased quickly after 2007. There are international cooperations among 56 countries, of which the United States is the most active one with the highest number of studies as well as highest citations. By coauthorship and cocitation analysis, we showed that Adrian Hayday, who is active in γδ T-cell field, was an active author in BTN publications with average year of 2015 and led a subfield. By keywords co-occurrence analysis, we found that γδ T cell, which is an important cancer immune regulator, is one important hotspot. Finally, we found that several BTN members' expression levels were significantly correlated with prognosis of lung cancer and breast cancer patients. Thus, these BTNs might play immune regulatory effects and could serve as potential biomarkers for cancer.