Network Pharmacology and In Silico Approach to Study the Mechanism of Quercetin against Breast Cancer

Abstract Breast cancer is one of the dreadful cancers in females, with an estimation of 2.3 million cases globally in 2022. Conventional methods of treatment have now become resistant and cause several adverse effects, due to which there is an urgent need that must be addressed. Thus, these traditional therapies should be replaced with novel drugs. Quercetin is a flavonoid compound which is abundantly reported in vegetables and fruits and displayed to have anti- cancer effects. So, quercetin has the potential to serve as a novel drug to treat breast cancer. Network pharmacology is an integrated technique that considerably aided us in exploring the potential of quercetin as a treatment for breast cancer. The first step in this technique includes target fishing of quercetin targeted genes and breast cancer associated genes through different online databases. An intersecting gene were obtained after removal of redundant data. VarElect analysis is performed to determine phenotypic- genotypic correlation between genes. We performed GO enrichment and pathway enrichment analysis on 52 common genes; followed by PPI network construction and based on topological parameters a top 10 genes are separated. The 8 key targets such as ABCC1, ABCC4, AKT1, ABCB1, CYP1B1, CYP19A1, ABCB4, ABCG2 were retrieved based on these topological parameters through Venny2.1 and then GEPIA and HPA analysis is done. In the end, molecular docking was performed on 8 key genes, and our results claim that quercetin is the potential natural drug that can treat breast cancer effectively and is also appropriate for oral drug intake. Therefore, this study comes to a conclusion that therapeutic influence of quercetin plays a significant role in treating breast cancer and aid in the advancement of clinical application of quercetin in future studies