An investigation of 6-Shogaol effects on MCF7 cell lines through a systems biology approach

Abstract

Abstract Introduction In the literature, to investigate hormonal mechanisms of cell growth of patients with breast cancer (BC), as the second most common cause of death in the world, the researchers frequently used MCF-7 cell lines. And, identifying the functional mechanisms of therapeutics agents as new cancer inhibitors is still unclear. Methods We used the NCBI-GEO dataset (GSE36973) to study the effects of 6-Shogaol on MCF-7 cell lines commonly used for more than 45 years in several studies. The pre-processing and post-processing stages were carried out for the target samples to identify the most significant differentially expressed genes between two MCF-7 with and without treated by 6-Shogaol. Furthermore, various analyses, including biological process and molecular function from the DAVID website, the protein–protein interaction (PPI) network, gene-miRNA, gene-transcription factor, gene-drugs, and gene-diseases networks, statistically significant assoications with clinical features and survival rates were conducted. Results The initial outcomes revealed thirty significant DEGs. Among which the approach resulted in eleven upregulated and nineteen downregulated genes. Over-expression of TRADD and CREB3L1 and low-expression of KIF4A and PALMD were substantial in the TNF signaling pathway. Moreover, hsa-mir-16-5p and hsa-mir-124-3p were inhibitors of breast cancer growth. Conclusion The fact that some of genes are associated with survival rates as well as various clinical features including disease stages, it can be deduced that the 6-Shogaol treatment on MCF7 cell lines at the genome level shows inhibition functionalities of the herbal medicine in breast cancer at early stages and pave the way in developing new therapeutic agents.