Abstract
Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) plays a significant role in breast cancer treatment. We conduct the study to ascertain the relative molecular targets of effective Chinese herbs in treating stage IV breast cancer.Survival benefit of CHM was verified by Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis. A bivariate correlation analysis was used to find and establish the effect of herbs in complex CHM formulas. A network pharmacological approach was adopted to explore the potential mechanisms of CHM.Patients in the CHM group had a median survival time of 55 months, which was longer than the 23 months of patients in the non-CHM group. Cox regression analysis indicated that CHM was an independent protective factor. Correlation analysis showed that 10 herbs were strongly correlated with favorable survival outcomes (P<0.01). Bioinformatics analyses suggested that the 10 herbs might achieve anti-breast cancer activity primarily through inhibiting HSP90, ERα and TOP-II related pathways.
Highlights
As the most general cancer in female, breast cancer (BC) is the second cause of cancer death among women all over the world, second only to lung cancer. [1,2,3]
Overall 182 Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients were brought into the study
The univariate analysis revealed that estrogen receptor (ER) positive (P < 0.001), Phytolaccae Radix (PR) positive (P < 0.001), endocrine therapy (P = 0.015) and Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) treatment (P < 0.001) were protective factors
Summary
As the most general cancer in female, breast cancer (BC) is the second cause of cancer death among women all over the world, second only to lung cancer. [1,2,3]. It’s estimated that breast cancer account for 15% of newly diagnosed cancers in Chinese women [4]. The mortality of breast cancer has decreased since the 1990s due to constant efforts in the process of screening, early stage diagnosis and systematic treatment [5]. Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients in the late stage of the disease have benefited a lot from several lines of treatment. The overall survival time of MBC patients has been improved [6,7,8]. As we can see from a previous study, the 5-year survival rate of patients with MBC was only 24%, and the median survival time has not improved significantly in recent years [2, 8]
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