Abstract

With population aging rapidly in developed and developing countries, covering medical needs for breast cancer diagnosis and treatments is a priority in Latin America. Statistical methods for gene expression clustering, protein-protein interactions, functional enrichment decisions and topological network analysis allowed we inferred, from MCF-7 breast cancer cell line estrogen deprivation/exposition results and the several well-known breast cancer biomarkers, a group of estrogen-responsing genes with good significance and impact. These genes are those most signifantly responsing to estrogen changes with high connectivity degree and good representativity of functional enrichment. Among our results, CDK2 (Cyclin-dependent kinase 2) is key for the topology of the network with over-regulated genes at 10 hours. From our results and other antecedents, we support the relevance of CDK2 as a therapeutic target. In addition, we hypothesize that its up-regulation at 10 hours carries an increase in phosphorylation of Rb to achieve E2F release thus driving the transcription of estrogen-responsive genes required for G1/S cell cycle transition.