Exploring the molecular mechanism of Lycium barbarum L. against breast cancer based on network pharmacology

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of wolfberry (Lycium barbarum L.) against breast cancer and the potential mechanisms using network pharmacology. The active ingredients and corresponding targets of wolfberry were screened by TCMSP database, and the potential targets of Wolfberry against breast cancer were obtained by intersecting them with the disease targets obtained from GeneCards database and OMIM database；The visualized network of drug-active component-disease-related target was constructed；Protein-protein interaction (PPI) relationships were demonstrated for the wolfberry-breast cancer intersection targets using the String database, and the core target is obtained by analyzing it. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) functional enrichment analysis were performed on crossover targets via the DAVID online platform and the Bioinformatics online platform. In this study, we screened the main active ingredients of Wolfberry against breast cancer as quercetin, β-sitosterol, Stigmasterol by network pharmacological methods. The PPI network showed that the core targets are ESR1, MYC, HIF1A, EGFR, VEGFA, CCND1etc. GO enrichment analysis showed that the main biological processes of wolfberry against breast cancer include response to steroid hormones, response to ketone, cellular response to chemical stress, epithelial cell proliferation. The results of KEGG enrichment analysis showed that the anti-breast cancer targets of wolfberry were mainly enriched in cancer pathways, estrogen signaling pathway, AGE-RAGE signaling pathway, P53 signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling pathway. Through a network pharmacology approach, we predicted wolfberry can treat breast cancer mainly by acting on ESR1, MYC, HIF1A and other key targets, regulating cancer pathway, estrogen signaling pathway and so on.