Obesity-Related Genes and Oral Cancer: A Bioinformatics Approach and Systematic Review

Obesity-Related Genes and Oral Cancer: A Bioinformatics Approach and Systematic Review

It is important to understand the biological processes linking obesity and cancer to identify new molecular targets for development of better therapeutic strategies. This study aims to synthesize knowledge regarding possible associations between obesity-related genes and oral cancer. We performed literature review about “oral cancer” and “obesity”. Gene databases and bioinformatics algorithms were used to in silico investigation of interactions networks between proteincoding genes, leader genes and molecular pathways that can possibly to link both pathological mechanisms. To this, GeneCards database, softwares STRING, Metaboanalyst and Cytoscape were employed. Genes were found to interact directly or indirectly with both obesity and oral cancer. Analyses of clustering revealed the TP53 gene as leader gene. Leptin was presented in group with the highest scores of relevance. Protein-protein interaction network linking obesity and oral cancer exhibits a power law behavior (correlation: 0.907; R2:0.851). Analysis of linear regression shows that genes related to obesity and oral cancer have higher diseaserelated connectivity than a global connectivity. Onthological analysis demonstrated different mechanisms associated to obesity and oral cancer, such as regulation of apoptosis and positive regulation of cellular process. We hypothesized that leptin is a molecule key in the link between obesity and oral cancer, by interactions with the p53 protein through CREBBP and EP300 proteins and HIF-1α, promoting angiogenesis. This study sought to organize relevant informations to further illuminate the role of genes that may be related to obesity and oral cancer. Angiogenesis genes can to be suggested as important factors to link both pathological processes..