Global research trends in reverse vaccinology from 2000 to 2021: A bibliometric analysis

Reverse vaccinology (RV) is a promising computational approach for expediting vaccine development by screening pathogen proteomes for protective antigens. This bibliometric analysis examined RV research from 2000 to 2021. A search in Scopus using the terms “reverse vaccinology”, “VaxiJen”, and “ANTIGENpro” yielded 605 results, illustrating a surge in RV publications between 2019 and 2021, primarily driven by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Geographical disparities exist in RV studies, with the United States of America leading contributions, followed by Europe and Asia. The Vaccine journal is a primary publishing platform, and Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology constitute the key subject area for RV. Despite significant progress made by influential RV publications, notably the VaxiJen paper and the works of Rappuoli, R. and Pizza, M. from Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics S.r.l., this study identified a need for more collaboration. This shortfall underscores the need for more integrated, global, multidisciplinary endeavors in RV research, especially in regions with limited vaccine manufacturing capacities, such as Africa. A ‘One Health’ approach, integrating human, animal, and environmental health, is proposed to broaden the scope of RV. There is also a need for review papers that aggregate and evaluate the results of RV prediction tools, spanning both rule-based filtering and machine learning (ML) methodologies, to provide a research roadmap.