Cancer Research and Development in South Korea, 2006-2024: A Text-Mining Analysis of National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS) Records.

PURPOSE: To characterize trends and structural patterns in government-funded cancer research and development (R&D) in South Korea using National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS) records. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed all NTIS projects during 2006-2024 (n=519,618), extracted via the NTIS OpenAPI. A bilingual regular-expression lexicon applied to Korean and English titles and keywords classified projects as definite (C2), possibly (C1), or unrelated (C0) to cancer, validated by two independent physicians on stratified samples. Outcomes included annual cancer-related project counts and funding, research-stage composition, and keyword dynamics. RESULTS: The lexicon identified 18,833 definite and 381 possible cancer-related projects, with high validated accuracy (κ=0.997). Cancer-related projects rose from 905 in 2006 (2.85% of NTIS projects) to a peak of 4,008 in 2021 (5.42%) and then plateaued (3,753 in 2023). In 2024, amid a government-wide R&D reduction, counts declined to 3,386 (5.67%), though cancer-related R&D was relatively protected as its NTIS share rose. Funding peaked at approximately 673 billion KRW in 2023 (1.9%-3.3% of annual government R&D). Basic research accounted for 71.7% of projects, whereas funding was more evenly distributed (basic 51.4%, development 23.0%, applied 17.5%). Keywords shifted from anticancer drugs and metastasis toward microenvironment, biomarkers, immunotherapy, liquid biopsy, organoids, and artificial intelligence. CONCLUSION: Government-funded cancer R&D in South Korea expanded through 2021 and was subsequently sustained-including relative protection during the 2024 government-wide R&D reduction-while retaining a basic-research backbone and shifting toward precision- and data-intensive oncology. NTIS-based monitoring may help guide strategic allocation of public cancer R&D.