Contribution of Latin American Countries to Cancer Research and Patent Generation: Recent Patents.

BACKGROUND: Data mining publications and patent data can provide decision support for scientists, inventors and industry in the field of cancer research.

OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this article it to identify trends of research and patent generation productivity originating from Latin American countries in the field of cancer.

METHOD: Publications were collected from the Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed database; and patents were collected from Latipat Espacenet databases. Data from January 1, 2000 until December 31, 2014 were searched for documents with specific words in cancer as a ''topic'' and a list of 20 Latin American countries as affiliation country.

RESULTS: A total of 12,989 items published and 244 patent applications including "cancer" were retrieved. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Peru were highest contributors in cancer research, while Brazil, Mexico, Cuba and Argentina were highest contributors in cancer patent applications.

CONCLUSION: The analysis of the data from this study provides an overview of research and patent activity in Latin America in the cancer field, which can be useful to help health policy makers and people in academia to shape up cancer research in the future.