ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Bioinform.
Sec. Integrative Bioinformatics
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2025.1606828
In silico analysis of CSF2RB from cancer genomic databases reveals heterogeneous role in different breast cancer subtypes
Provisionally accepted
Raghad Alshelaiel1Abdulmohsen Alkushi2Lolwah Abdullah Alriyees3
Abir Alamro1
Humaidah Alanazi1Areej Alhareeri4Bader Almuzzaini5
Mamoon Rashid6*- 1Department of Biochemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 2College of Science and Health Professions, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 3Department of Surgery, King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 4King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), College of Applied Medical Sciences, Riyadh , Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 5Department of Medical Genomics Research, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 6Department of AI and Bioinformatics, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Objective: The CSF2RB is the common beta-chain of the heterodimeric receptors of cytokines, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin 3 (IL-3), and interleukin 5 (IL-5). The activation of these cell surface receptors results in functional responses that include cellular proliferation, differentiation, survival, and maturation via multiple signaling pathways such as JAK2/STAT5, MAPK and PI3-Kinase/AKT. Moreover, it CSF2RB is abnormally expressed in a variety of tumors, especially in leukemia. The implications of CSF2RB in breast cancer remain unclear and have not been widely studied.We analyzed CSF2RB genetic changes, mRNA expression, DNA methylation, prognosis, and immune infiltration level across different tumors with a focus on breast and hematological malignancies. The data used in this study was hosted on various cancer genomics databases publicly available to the community such as TCGA, cBioPortal, TIMER2, GEPIA, UALCAN.Results: Our in-silico analyses showed over-expression of CSF2RB in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (LAML) and decreased expression of CSF2RB in Breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA) compared to paired matched normal samples. Promoter methylation of CSF2RB was elevated in BRCA samples compared to normal samples. Our analysis further demonstrates that the CSF2RB gene has good prognostic effect in case of BRCA but not statistically significant from all databases studied. We found that BRCA and its subtypes have high CD8+ T cell infiltration level positively correlated withto CSF2RB gene expression level. Wild type CSF2RB has higher expression than the mutated CSF2RB in breast cancer. CSF2RB expression and/or mutation has no significant effect on the overall survival probability. CSF2RB expression is down-regulated in Luminal and HER2 positive samples but up-regulated in TNBC comparing to normal samples.The results suggested a differentdiverse role of CSF2RB gene in different subtypes of breast cancer. To attribute a clear role to CSF2RB in breast cancer, further functional studies pertaining to differential gene expression, methylation and their prognostic effect in each breast cancer subtypes are required.
Keywords: Cancer, breast cancer, CSF2RB, prognosis, Cancer genomics, bioinformatics
Received: 06 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alshelaiel, Alkushi, Alriyees, Alamro, Alanazi, Alhareeri, Almuzzaini and Rashid. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mamoon Rashid, Department of AI and Bioinformatics, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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