A comprehensive bioinformatics analysis to identify potential prognostic biomarkers among TNFSF superfamily in breast cancer

Abstract Breast cancer (BC) is one of most important mortality factors among women therefore to find important genes in BC can help early diagnosis, treatment or prevention. TNFSF or tumor necrosis factor Superfamily have an important role in various cancers. In BC, some of studies have found dual roles for these genes. In this research, we conducted a comprehensive and detailed bioinformatics study on this family. UALCAN, TNMplot, UCSC Xena, GEPIA, The Human Protein Atlas, Kaplan–Meier plotter, bc-GenExMiner, cBioPortal, STRING, GeneMANIA, Enrichr, TIMER and shinyDepMap were used for analysis. We found that these genes play their role through the immune system and the high expression of eight FASLG, LTB, TNF, TNFSF8, TNFSF10, TNFSF11, TNFSF12, TNFSF13 genes were positively associated with OS and RFS. Overall, our data showed that these genes can be considered as prognostic biomarkers. Further, our results suggest that this family has anti-tumor activity.