BACKGROUND: Cancer immunotherapy is the use of the immune system to treat cancer. After years of research, there have been a significant number of publications in this field. We analyzed the literature and performed a hotspot analysis to identify important areas of future scientific research.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Articles (2945) related to cancer immunotherapy published in the past 3 years were selected as the research sample. BICOMB software was then used to retrieve the high-frequency words and construct a text/co-word matrix. Next, gCLUTO software was used to analyze the matrix by double-clustering and visual analysis, in a strategy of hotspot identification.

RESULTS: We constructed a text and co-word matrix composed of 40 high-frequency words and 2945 articles and generated a hotspot “peak map” based on double-clustering analysis. The strategic coordinates were set by use of a co-word matrix and clustering analysis. The distribution of organs or disease and the subclass of cancer immunotherapy were analyzed.

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we classified the hot-spots of “tumor immunotherapy” into 6 categories and 8 aspects. Calculation and analysis revealed that the field of tumor immunotherapy shows a slight trend of polarization, and the immune checkpoint inhibitor PD1 blocker shows the greatest potential for future development.

Keywords: Bibliometrics, Immunotherapy, Neoplasms by Site, Programmed Cell Death 1 Receptor