Skip to main content

China overtakes the United States in cancer research output

 Nature Index

China overtakes the United States in cancer research output

China takes pole position in cancer-related research in the Nature Index, with a massive jump in output.

Heating up

In 2024, China overtook the United States in cancer research output in the Nature Index for the first time, taking its place as the leading country in the field. With a 19% jump in Share that year, China’s improvement was much stronger than the United States’, whose output only increased by 5% between 2023 and 2024.

Preferred partner

The United States is the unequivocal leader in cancer-research collaboration, being involved in the top 10 partnerships in the field by bilateral collaboration score. The United States–China collaboration, seen here among other selected US cancer-research partnerships, lost significant ground in 2021, which it might struggle to regain if political tensions between the countries continue.

Leader of the pack

Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is in a class of its own in cancer-related research output in the Nature Index. With a Share of 1,169.18 for the period January 2019 to August 2024, Harvard is well clear of its closest rival in the field, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, with a Share of 768.09 for the period.

Pole position

China outperformed the United States in cancer-related output in 2024, but the United States leads in output for the period 2019–24. The United States dedicates more of its research in the Nature Index to cancer than any other country in the top 50, with 11% of its total Share in the Index for 2019–24 related to the topic. For China, that figure is 9%.

Team effort

Harvard University does the heavy lifting in the United States’ cancer research collaboration, forming 8 of the top 10 international partnerships by bilateral collaboration score in 2019–24. It dominates most of its partnerships, contributing far more than the other institution, as seen here with the leading 5 partnerships.

A stacked bar chart showing collaboration scores of the leading five international partnerships in cancer research

Source: Nature Index

Nature 640, S65 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01154-4

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Age of Principal Investigators at the Time of First R01-Equivalent Remains Level with Recent Years in FY 2023

  Age of Principal Investigators at the Time of First R01-Equivalent Remains Level with Recent Years in FY 2023 by Mike Lauer In 2021, we  reported  that the age at which a researcher is designated on an NIH award for the first time had increased since 1995 and plateaued in the 2010s. We showed that the median age for PhDs first designated on an award remained around 41 in recent years while the median age of MDs and MD-PhDs was 44. There were no appreciable differences between researchers identifying as male or female. Today we are sharing an update on these data for fiscal years (FYs) 2021 – 2023, with the addition of information related to race, ethnicity, and disability status. We have heard concerns about the rising age at which early career researchers are first supported on an NIH award. Some concerns have centered on the ways competitive funding and academic hiring impact  early career scientists pursuing independent research careers . For simplicity in this ...
Read more

NPR - Global wishes for 2024: Pay for family leave. Empower Black men. Respect rural voices

Image
What is your global wish for 2024? Some ideas to get you thinking...  Global wishes for 2024: Pay for family leave. Empower Black men. Respect rural voices by NPR Staff New Year's resolutions, it turns out, probably originate in the Global South. The Babylonians of 4,000 years ago threw  a heck of a party  on (their) New Year and would make promises to the gods to do various righteous actions. Here at Goats and Soda, our New Year's tradition doesn't go back  quite as far  (dating to  ca. 2022 , some scholars say ...), but we are proud of it nonetheless: We ask global health and development leaders around the world to offer up a wish for the coming year. Through their responses, we can see the hope, determination and, sometimes, the frustration of these activists, scientists and thinkers. Here are their global wishes for 2024. My wish: Adopt paid family leave in the U.S. as most of the world already has Enlarge this image C. Gall/IPR/Northwestern University ...
Read more

How You Can Effectively Participate in the Regulatory Process Through Public Comment

 Regulations.gov   How You Can Effectively Participate in the Regulatory Process Through Public Comment  GO TO LINK HERE   When most people think of laws, they think of bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. However, many legal requirements come from “regulations” or “rules” that are issued by agencies that work for the President, like the Department of Transportation or the Department of Health and Human Services, instead of Congress.  Regulations, like statutes passed by Congress, are law. Congress passes statutes that give agencies the authority to issue regulations. Regulations can impose binding legal requirements. Regulations can do everything from creating requirements for food manufacturing companies to prevent food-borne illness to outlining certain requirements for going through TSA security screening on your way to board a flight. Regulations can establish significant policies and requirements for individual citizens, state and...
Read more