• Insilico approaches to identify pathways for infertility associated to endometriosis
  • Zahra Sadat Heshmat,1 Maryam Hafezi,2 Poopak Eftekhari-Yazdi,3 Parvaneh Afsharian,4,*
    1. Department of Genetics, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
    2. Department of Endocrinology and Female Infertility, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
    3. Department of Embryology, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
    4. Department of Genetics, Reproductive Biomedicine Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran


  • Introduction: Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent disease that affects approximately about 10% (190million) of women of reproductive age. The most Common Age-Related endometriosis is 25 to 29 years old and it is observed less in women over 44 years old. Genetic and environmental factors play a role in its occurrence. One of the most common symptoms in advanced level of this disease is infertility. There are several ways to treatment the endometriosis considering as prevention to Infertility such as drug therapy but selecting suitable drug is not easy. Now days, insilico methods have been replaced in vitro and in vivo expriments to predict the best drugs although the target drug must be tested through these experimental methods. The Present insilico study was designed to investigate the genes common between endometriosis and infertility to be the gole of target therapy.
  • Methods: In this study, we used CTD (The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database) database to identified pathways and genes associated with Endometriosis and infertility. Also we used EnrichNet database to predict the functional association between genes and beside the Gene MANIA website was practiced to generate gene-gene interactions.
  • Results: Base on the CTD results, we found 162 genes related to endometriosis and 30 genes related to infertility. Five genes were common in both diseases (CYP19A1, ESR2, NR2F2, PAPPA, PRL). Interactions among these genes were shown. Base on string database results, PPI enrichment p-value was 0.00117, that it significantly shown the importance of this network interaction. Among these genes, CYP19A1 and ESR2 were shown better combined Score (0.925) than others. Also through Gene Mania results, these genes have interaction with each other and with a query list of genes. Also we checked the pathways of these genes and common pathways between endometriosis and infertility.
  • Conclusion: The five genes are common between endometriosis and infertility that can be as target and candidate for selecting the insilico drug study. In this article, we examine the pathways and metabolisms to answer the following question: Are these pathways can be controlled by designing drugs or natural compounds?
  • Keywords: Endometriosis-Infertility-Insilico-Pathway