• Identifying the miRNA and mRNA‑associated networks to reveal potential prognostic biomarkers for Breast cancer
  • Zahra Torki,1,* Mohammad Reza Alivand,2
    1. Department of Medical Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
    2. Department of Medical Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran


  • Introduction: Despite significant breakthroughs in breast cancer diagnosis and therapy, the prognosis remains unfavorable. microRNAs (miRNAs) appear to play a key role in the genesis and progression of human malignancies, according to mounting data. However, most miRNAs’ regulation mechanisms and clinical relevance in breast cancer are yet unknown.
  • Methods: The gene expression profiles for miRNA and mRNA were collected from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), in this study we systematically analyzed the expression profiles of mRNA (GSE54002 dataset) and miRNA (GSE42525 dataset). Using Cytoscape, a miRNA-mRNA regulatory network was built and visualized. The STRING database was used to build the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and the cytoHubba plugin was used to extract hub genes. The functions and signaling pathways associated with these differentially expressed mRNAs were discovered using Gene Ontology and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genomes.
  • Results: We found 225 differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRNAs), and 665 DEmRNAs in total. The enrichment results from analyzing DEmRNAs was shown to be associated with Interactions between immune cells and microRNAs in tumor microenvironment, B Cell Receptor Signaling Pathway and Cancer immunotherapy by CTLA4 blockade. Also construction of PPI network fof the DEmRNAs showed 564 nodes and 3899 edges in total from which one most significant module was identified. We also selected the key deregulated miRNAs and mRNAs based on statistical significance.
  • Conclusion: Our results show the significant roles of miRNA-mRNA regulatory networks in breast cancer and identified a new prognosis predictor and some potential prognostic biomarkers as well as involved genes and miRNAs in patients with breast cancer.
  • Keywords: Breast cancer, GEO, DEmiRNAs, DEmRNAs, microRNA