Objective To reveal the research focus and frontiers of translational medicine at home and abroad, so as to provide references for relevant domestic institutions to carry out translational medicine research. Methods Based on bibliometrics, themes "translational medicine" (in English or in Chinese) was searched in Web of Science and CNKI to retrieve the related literatures from 2001 to 2020. CiteSpace and VOSviewer softwares were used for quantitative analysis. Results The research focuses of translational medicine at home and abroad were relatively consistent, mainly including 5 aspects:translational medicine concept and development model, tumor diagnosis and precision treatment, stem cell translational research, 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering, and precision medicine and genomics. 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering and omics data analysis have become new research trends. The research abroad were mainly original research focusing on tumors, stem cells, tissue engineering and genomics, while the research in China were mostly review focusing on the translational medicine disciplines construction and talents training, translational medicine platform construction and collaboration mechanism and so on. Conclusion There are abundant research achievements related to translational medicine at home and abroad; however, for the overall development trend, there is still a gap between China and foreign countries on the development level. With the development of advanced technologies such as precision medicine and big data analysis, resource integration and multi-institutional collaborations should be strengthened translational medicine research in our country with the assistant of innovative technologies; technology transformation should be accelerated, and the bridge between bench and bedside should be built.