Abstract
Background:
In 2020, there were 2.26 million new breast cancer cases, accounting for 24.5% of the total 9.23 million new cancer cases in women, far exceeding other cancer types in women. And for the death of cancer patients, there were 4.43 million female cancer deaths, among them, about 15.5% cancer deaths were caused by breast cancer. Breast cancer is the number one morbidity and mortality among women in the world, and breast cancer has seriously endangered the health and life of women around the world. Therefore, to address the growing public health problem of breast cancer, we must identify the critical genes and additional treatment targets of breast cancer.
Methods:
The Weighted Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) was used to explore the hub genes of breast cancer patients. The regulation network of these hub genes was constructed with reanalyzing Chromatin Immunoprecipitation sequencing (Chip-seq) of the breast cancer cells. With the single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptome dataset of breast cancer patients, the hub gene expression abundance of each cell cluster and associates of the hub genes and immune cell was estimated. To find the genes that could be a prognosis factor or a potential treatment target, we conducted survival analysis based on each gene’s mRNA level and protein level. Finally, we used virtual screening of natural product molecules to find the leading compounds of our predicted target.
Results:
128 hub genes were found in breast cancer patients. Among these, Squalene Epoxidase (SQLE) can be a potential drug target, 17 molecules were ranked the top and the ZINC263585481 small molecule was the most possible as a leading compound of SQLE.
Conclusion:
Our study provides a whole critical genes of the development of breast cancer and found amounts of leading compounds, which will facilitate the curing of breast cancer.