Bioinformatics and network biology approach to identifying type 2 diabetes genes and pathways that influence the progression of breast cancer

Breast cancer is the second most prevalent malignancy affecting women. Postmenopausal women breast tumor is one of the top causes of death in women, accounting for 23% of cancer cases. Type 2 diabetes, a worldwide pandemic, has been connected to a heightened risk of several malignancies, although its association with breast cancer is still uncertain. In comparison to non-diabetic women, women with T2DM had a 23% elevated likelihood of developing breast cancer. It is difficult to determine causative or genetic susceptibility that connect T2DM and breast cancer. We created a large-scale network-based quantitative approach employing unbiased methods to discover abnormally amplified genes in both T2DM and breast cancer, to solve these issues. We performed transcriptome analysis to uncover identical genetic biomarkers and pathways to clarify the connection between T2DM and breast cancer patients. In this study, two RNA-seq datasets (GSE103001 and GSE86468) from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) are used to identify mutually differentially expressed genes (DEGs) for breast cancer and T2DM, as well as common pathways and prospective medicines. Firstly, 45 shared genes (30 upregulated and 15 downregulated) between T2D and breast cancer were detected. We employed gene ontology and pathway enrichment to characterize prevalent DEGs' molecular processes and signal transduction pathways and observed that T2DM has certain connections to the progression of breast cancer. Using several computational and statistical approaches, we created a protein-protein interactions (PPI) network and revealed hub genes. These hub genes can be potential biomarkers, which may also lead to new therapeutic strategies for investigated diseases. We conducted TF-gene interactions, gene-microRNA interactions, protein-drug interactions, and gene-disease associations to find potential connections between T2DM and breast cancer pathologies. We assume that the potential drugs that emerged from this study could be useful therapeutic values. Researchers, doctors, biotechnologists, and many others may benefit from this research.