Identification of Key Biomarkers Associated with Ductal Breast Cancer in Spatial Transcriptomics Data

Spatial transcriptomics (ST) is a collection of groundbreaking genomic technologies that allows the measurement of gene expression with spatial localization information on tissues. Recent developments in ST analysis have allowed a deep investigation of breast cancer environments and the cellular composition of such malignancies. Despite these advancements, a comprehensive spatial exploration of breast cancer-related genes and their involvement in oncogenic signaling pathways has not yet been fully realized. This limitation is partly due to a lack of refined methods capable of effectively extracting differential gene expression information from multiple ST datasets. In this study, we integrated three 10x genomics breast cancer ST datasets that offer high-resolution gene expression insights. We identified nine potential breast cancer marker genes that are differentially expressed in tumor regions and performed various downstream analyses such as survival analysis, protein-protein interactions, and conserved domain analysis to articulate the neoplastic tendencies of our identified genes. In summary, our analysis would provide guidance for researchers to better comprehend the biological functions of the detected candidate genes and investigate potential therapeutic targets.