ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Cancer Endocrinology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1537799
Mechanistic study of quercetin in the treatment of thyroid cancer with diabetes based on network pharmacology and in vitro experiments
Provisionally accepted
- 1First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China
- 2Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Thyroid cancer (TC) stands as a prevalent malignancy within the global endocrine system, with its incidence notably exacerbated by the presence of diabetes. However, the specific relationship between TC and diabetes and promising treatment strategies that address both conditions simultaneously are still under exploration. Quercetin, herb medicine from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), is widely used as an adjunctive therapy with Western medicine in the treatment of many diseases based on a wide range of biological effects. The objective of this study was to explore the efficacy of quercetin in treating TC with diabetes combining bioinformatics and network pharmacology. After multistep Cox proportional hazards regressions, we built a prognostic risk model for TC-diabetes and identified targets for quercetin in treating TC with diabetes. Molecular docking was employed to evaluate the binding affinities of quercetin with core targets, and in vitro experiments verified quercetin's targets and functions. 11 prognostic genes were included in the prediction model with a great performance in predicting the prognosis of TC-diabetic patients. 45 genes served as the targets of quercetin in treating TC with diabetes, among which, 5 core genes were screened as the most contributors. Through molecular docking, matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP3) was identified as the potential therapeutic target of quercetin. In vitro experiments have found that quercetin can inhibit the proliferation of thyroid cancer cells and the expression of MMP3 under high glucose conditions. In summary, quercetin may suppress the progression of TC-diabetes by inhibiting the proliferation of thyroid cancer cells and the expression of MMP3.
Keywords: Quercetin, thyroid cancer, diabetes, Network Pharmacology, bioinformatics, molecular docking
Received: 03 Dec 2024; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Chen, Cai, Yuan, Lin and He. 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: Zhipeng He, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, Jiangxi Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.