Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-Cas9 gene therapy: The top 50 most-cited papers

Background: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas9 (CRISPR/Cas9) is a gene-editing technique that creates advancement in biomedical technology. It is a form of gene alteration method that was investigated and examined from Streptococcus pyogenes dependable on Cas9 nuclease enzyme through microbiological and genetic examination. This system consists of a nucleic acid, RNA, specifically guide RNA (gRNA), and a nuclease enzyme, Cas9. The potential implications of CRISPR/Cas9 include cancer, cystic fibrosis, familial hypercholesterolemia, and Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. Objective: The objective was to show the most impactful publications through a bibliometric analysis of the top 50 most-cited papers regarding the topic of CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. Methods: The most-cited research articles relative to CRISPR Cas9 were collected using Scopus. The order of the most-cited papers was conducted by categorizing the studies in an ordinal manner from the most-cited to the least-cited studies. The studies were stratified by selecting the top 50 most-cited papers with the title “CRISPR Cas9.” Results: A number of 2230 research papers regarding CRISPR Cas9 were retrieved. 42% of the papers from the top 50 most-cited papers were published in 2014. The total citation count for each of the top 50 studies ranged from 183 to 1824, and the mean number of citations was 420. The first five articles were cited more than 1000 times and the remaining articles were cited more than 100 times. The journal “Nature” has published the most studies relevant to CRISPR Cas9 with a total of 23 studies, Cell with 8 studies, followed by Science and Nucleic Acids with 4 studies published and Genetics with 2 and the remaining journals with one publication each. Conclusion: It is clear that the future of CRISPR Cas9 is promising as demonstrated by the highly impactful studies in the topic with high citation counts in a relatively short period of time after publication.