Multi-Task Graph Neural Network For Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Repurposing Using Knowledge Graph And Multi-Level Evidence

Abstract

Developing drugs for treating Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been extremely challenging and costly due to limited knowledge on underlying biological mechanisms and therapeutic targets. Repurposing drugs or their combination has shown potential in accelerating drug development due to the reduced drug toxicity while targeting multiple pathologies. To address the challenge in AD drug development, we developed a multi-task machine learning pipeline to integrate a comprehensive knowledge graph on biological/pharmacological interactions and multi-level evidence on drug efficacy, to identify repurposable drugs and their combination candidates. We developed and computationally validated a heterogeneous graph representation model with transfer learning from universal biomedical databases and with joint optimization with AD risk genes. Using the drug embedding from the heterogeneous graph representation model, we ranked drug candidates based on evidence from post-treatment transcriptomic patterns, mechanistic efficacy in preclinical models, population-based treatment effect, and Phase II/III clinical trials. We experimentally validated the top-ranked candidates in neuronal cells, identifying drug combinations with efficacy in reducing oxidative stress and safety in maintaining neuronal viability and morphology. Our neuronal response experiments confirmed several biologically efficacious drug combinations. This pipeline showed that harmonizing heterogeneous and complementary data/knowledge, including human interactome, transcriptome patterns, experimental efficacy, and real-world patient data shed light on the drug development of complex diseases.

Causal feature selection using a knowledge graph combining structured knowledge from the biomedical literature and ontologies: a use case studying depression as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease

“…There is vast, and still growing, literature on integrating and using forms of computable biomedical knowledge. For example, related work has been done in defining ontologies for representing knowledge for neurodegenerative diseases 78 , identifying erroneous information by applying transitive closure over causal predicates 78 , modeling argument structure 152 , detecting contradictions in statements extracted from the literature 153,154 , drug repurposing pipelines 32,33,35,155,156 , and elucidating mechanisms in systems and molecular biology 40 . Simply put, the vast body of tangentially related work would be impossible to condense.…”