EARN: an ensemble machine learning algorithm to predict driver genes in metastatic breast cancer

Abstract

BackgroundToday, there are a lot of markers on the prognosis and diagnosis of complex diseases such as primary breast cancer. However, our understanding of the drivers that influence cancer aggression is limited.MethodsIn this work, we study somatic mutation data consists of 450 metastatic breast tumor samples from cBio Cancer Genomics Portal. We use four software tools to extract features from this data. Then, an ensemble classifier (EC) learning algorithm called EARN (Ensemble of Artificial Neural Network, Random Forest, and non-linear Support Vector Machine) is proposed to evaluate plausible driver genes for metastatic breast cancer (MBCA). ResultsThis study is an attempt to focus on the findings in several aspects of MBCA prognosis and diagnosis. First, drivers and passengers predicted by SVM, ANN, RF, and EARN are introduced. Second, biological inferences of predictions based on gene set enrichment analysis are discussed. Third, statistical validation and comparison of all learning methods based on evaluation metrics are done. Finally, the pathway enrichment analysis (PEA) using ReactomeFIVIz tool (FDR<0.03) for the top 100 genes predicted by EARN leads us to propose a new gene set panel for MBCA, including HDAC3, ABAT, GRIN1, PLCB1, and KPNA2 as well as NCOR1, TBL1XR1, SIRT4, KRAS, CACNA1E, PRKCG, GPS2, SIN3A, ACTB, KDM6B, and PRMT1. Furthermore, we compare results for MBCA to other outputs regarding 983 primary tumor samples of breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA) obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The comparison between outputs shows that ROC-AUC reached 99.24% using EARN for MBCA and 99.79% for BRCA. This statistical result is better than three individual classifiers in each case.ConclusionsThis research using an integrative approach assists precision oncologists to design compact targeted panels that eliminate the need for whole-genome/exome sequencing.

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“…For the Wisconsin dataset, researchers have taken into consideration the literature survey discussed in Table2with reference no[21−29]. For gene dataset graph, researcher have considered the reference no[19,20,30].…”