Drug Repurposing and Molecular Insights in the Fight Against Breast Cancer

Abstract

Breast Cancer (BC) is a complex disease with high incidence in developed countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is accounted for 11.7% of all new cancer cases worldwide in 2020, with an estimated 2.3 million new diagnosis every year. A 2.5% annual reduction in the disease mortality could prevent 2.5 million deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2040. In the current work systematic review was conducted for drugs under clinical trials or approved for treatment of BC. It was observed that many drugs were repurposed for BC treatment over the course of time even though they were originally developed for some other disease. This is called as Drug Repurposing. It is an approach that has gained significant attention in recent years as a promising alternative to traditional drug discovery, which is often costly, time-consuming, and has a high failure rate. Thirteen drugs were observed to be repurposed for BC treatment and we dig deep into their molecular background and reasons for their efficacies in BC treatment. Molecular targets of these drugs in the human system were predicted and protein interaction networks were analysed to work out the genes responsible for their repurposed events. Few genes seen in the disease progression, were BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB-2, ATM, TP53, PTEN, and HER2/neu participate in various biological pathways, such as the PI3K/Akt/mTOR and ER pathways, and biological processes such as the tumor microenvironment, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and DNA damage response pathways. Mutations or alterations in these genes or pathways can lead to the development and progression, and understanding their roles that can help in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. This study offers an in-silico perspective and a powerful tool to find potentially effective drugs by analysing the molecular mechanisms and signalling pathways involved in the disease progression.