BackgroundModeling is now increasingly used to get detailed insights into complex biological systems associated with different types of cancers. In order to understand one such complex system of cell signaling networks associated with breast cancer and to determine the potential impact of miRNA-7 inhibitor on breast cancer progression, we have tried to present a rather simple system of formalization by employing hybrid PN modeling, which consists of many important breast cancers associated oncogenes, proto-oncogenes and tumor-suppressor genes. The main objective of this study is to establish a model for the ease of understanding the mechanism of breast cancer progression and therapeutic potential of miRNA-7 against breast cancer. MethodologyA stepwise approach has been exploited including modeling of breast cancer-associated network, extraction of miRNA-7 associated inhibitory gene targets, model verification via hybrid petrinet modeling tool and analyses of simulation results. Results and discussionsThe approach was acquired to establish a highly accurate therapeutic potential of miRNA-7 against breast cancer. The results generated correlates with the experimental studies; the data verifies that the model is very useful in predicting the useful therapeutic abilities of different inhibitory agents which in our case was a miRNA. This study specifically analyses the levels of STAT3, RAS ER-alpha, P53, BRCA-1, and AKT, PI3K genes in both the presence and absence of miRNA-7 in breast cancer. Most of these oncogenes and their linked pathways were observed to be down-regulated under the increased activation influence of miRNA-7, contrarily the effect upon tumor-suppressor genes was opposite they were up-regulated under the increased activation of miRNA-7 while under the decreased activity level of miRNA-7 the tumor-suppressor genes were down-regulated accordingly with the normal cancerous mechanism while all the other oncogenes were found to be up-regulated in this case, this approach elaborated and verified the oncogenic potential of miRNA-7 against breast cancer. ConclusionThe hybrid petrinet (HPN) based modeling approach may help the biologists to understand how different inhibitor therapies work against breast cancer progression. The modeling approaches applied here can also provide a new path for scientists to use combination therapies of oncogenic and tumor-suppressor miRNAs against different cancers and other diseases associated with complex integrated cell signaling networks in biological systems.