cancer chemo-preventive effects of red propolis: a system biology approach

Background and objectives: propolis is a natural product of honey bees that is characterized by therapeutic effects on diverse diseases. to elucidate the molecular mechanism of propolis effects on tumor, protein-protein interaction (ppi) network analysis of proteome data of hep-2 cells treated with red propolis was conducted. methods: cytoscape v 3.9.1 and its plug-ins evaluated the differentially expressed proteins (deps) in terms of network construction and the corresponding topological features. results: the results implied that six hub-bottlenecks including actb, gapdh, hsp90aa1, hspa8, hsp90ab1, and hspa5 were present in the ppi network; however, only the last central protein was among deps. cluego+ cluepedia identified five related biological processes and three action types of their connections. results refer to anticancer property of red propolis. conclusion: the proposed crucial proteins and their linked biological processes may represent as key players in the anticancer underlying mechanism of red propolis.