Proteomic investigation of intra-tumor heterogeneity using network-based contextualization - a case study on prostate cancer

Cancer is a heterogeneous disease, confounding the identification of relevant markers and drug targets. Network-based analysis is robust against noise, potentially offering a promising approach towards biomarker identification. We describe here the application of two network-based methods, qPSP (Qua...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Goh, Wilson Wen Bin, Zhao, Yaxing, Sue, Andrew Chi-Hau, Guo, Tiannan, Wong, Limsoon
Other Authors: School of Biological Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2021
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150776
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Cancer is a heterogeneous disease, confounding the identification of relevant markers and drug targets. Network-based analysis is robust against noise, potentially offering a promising approach towards biomarker identification. We describe here the application of two network-based methods, qPSP (Quantitative Proteomics Signature Profiling) and PFSNet (Paired Fuzzy SubNetworks), in an intra-tissue proteome data set of prostate tissue samples. Despite high basal variation, we find that traditional statistical analysis may exaggerate the extent of heterogeneity. We also report that network-based analysis outperforms protein-based feature selection with concomitantly higher cross-validation accuracy. Overall, network-based analysis provides emergent signal that boosts sensitivity while retaining good precision. It is a potential means of circumventing heterogeneity for stable biomarker discovery.