Working Paper Cnr-Ceris, N° 02/2013

Abstract:  The paper analyzes the evolution of scientific production and patenting, main proxies of scientific and technological breakthroughs, concerning non-thermal plasma for biomedical applications in order to detect emerging technological trajectories. New scientific directions of non-thermal plasma in medicine play a critical role because they might generate important innovations that could change the clinical practice. Occurrences of scientific products and patents are retrieved with Boolean queries on SciVerse database after a meticulous procedure to delineate the most promising applications in biomedical sciences. Data are analyzed with two methodological approaches: an exponential model of growth and regression analysis. Results show high rates of scientific growth for applications of non-thermal plasma in disinfection, anticancer treatments, dermatology, whereas for surgery, although values of occurrences are similar to the other research fields, it shows a different trend that after the 2005 is decreasing due to the peculiar application to materials for implantation. Some arguments are discussed at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Non Thermal Plasma, Technological Trajectories, Plasma, Cancer, Medicine

JEL Codes: O30; I31

Mario Coccia thanks the colleagues of the Georgia Institute of Technology for scientific support. In addition, he gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CNR - National Research Council of Italy for visiting at Yale University and Georgia Institute of Technology where this research has been developed. Ugo Finardi acknowledges the help and spur of Proff. S. Coluccia and L. Battezzati (University of Torino, Italy). We also thank Ceris-CNR staff and Prof. S. Rolfo of CERIS-CNR for supporting this research field. We thank an anonymous referee for detailed comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer holds, however.

download