natural language processing | Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

This session will provide information regarding methodologic and computational aspects of proteogenomic analysis of tumor samples, particularly in the context of clinical trials. Availability of comprehensive proteomic and matching genomic data for tumor samples characterized by the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program will be described, including data access procedures and informatic tools under development. Recent advances on mass spectrometry-based targeted assays for inclusion in clinical trials will also be discussed.

Amanda G Paulovich, Shankha Satpathy, Meenakshi Anurag, Bing Zhang, Steven A Carr

Methods and tools for comprehensive proteogenomic characterization of bulk tumor to needle core biopsies

Shankha Satpathy

TCGA has 11,000 cancers with >20,000 somatic alterations but only 128 proteins as proteomics was still young field
CPTAC is NCI proteomic effort
Chemical labeling approach now method of choice for quantitative proteomics
Looked at ovarian and breast cancers: to measure PTM like phosphorylated the sample preparation is critical

Data access and informatics tools for proteogenomics analysis

Bing Zhang

Raw and processed data (raw MS data) with linked clinical data can be extracted in CPTAC
Python scripts are available for bioinformatic programming

Pathways to clinical translation of mass spectrometry-based assays

Meenakshi Anurag

· Using kinase inhibitor pulldown (KIP) assay to identify unique kinome profiles

· Found single strand break repair defects in endometrial luminal cases, especially with immune checkpoint prognostic tumors

· Paper: JNCI 2019 analyzed 20,000 genes correlated with ET resistant in luminal B cases (selected for a list of 30 genes)

· Validated in METABRIC dataset

· KIP assay uses magnetic beads to pull out kinases to determine druggable kinases

· Looked in xenografts and was able to pull out differential kinomes

· Matched with PDX data so good clinical correlation

· Were able to detect ESR1 fusion correlated with ER+ tumors

Tuesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Virtual Educational Session

Survivorship

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from Research to the Cancer Clinic

The adoption of omic technologies in the cancer clinic is giving rise to an increasing number of large-scale high-dimensional datasets recording multiple aspects of the disease. This creates the need for frameworks for translatable discovery and learning from such data. Like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for the cancer lab, methods for the clinic need to (i) compare and integrate different data types; (ii) scale with data sizes; (iii) prove interpretable in terms of the known biology and batch effects underlying the data; and (iv) predict previously unknown experimentally verifiable mechanisms. Methods for the clinic, beyond the lab, also need to (v) produce accurate actionable recommendations; (vi) prove relevant to patient populations based upon small cohorts; and (vii) be validated in clinical trials. In this educational session we will present recent studies that demonstrate AI and ML translated to the cancer clinic, from prognosis and diagnosis to therapy.
NOTE: Dr. Fish’s talk is not eligible for CME credit to permit the free flow of information of the commercial interest employee participating.

Ron C. Anafi, Rick L. Stevens, Orly Alter, Guy Fish

Overview of AI approaches in cancer research and patient care

Rick L. Stevens

Deep learning is less likely to saturate as data increases
Deep learning attempts to learn multiple layers of information
The ultimate goal is prediction but this will be the greatest challenge for ML
ML models can integrate data validation and cross database validation
What limits the performance of cross validation is the internal noise of data (reproducibility)
Learning curves: not the more data but more reproducible data is important
Neural networks can outperform classical methods
Important to measure validation accuracy in training set. Class weighting can assist in development of data set for training set especially for unbalanced data sets

Discovering genome-scale predictors of survival and response to treatment with multi-tensor decompositions

Orly Alter

Finding patterns using SVD component analysis. Gene and SVD patterns match 1:1
Comparative spectral decompositions can be used for global datasets
Validation of CNV data using this strategy
Found Ras, Shh and Notch pathways with altered CNV in glioblastoma which correlated with prognosis
These predictors was significantly better than independent prognostic indicator like age of diagnosis

Identifying targets for cancer chronotherapy with unsupervised machine learning

Ron C. Anafi

Many clinicians have noticed that some patients do better when chemo is given at certain times of the day and felt there may be a circadian rhythm or chronotherapeutic effect with respect to side effects or with outcomes
ML used to determine if there is indeed this chronotherapy effect or can we use unstructured data to determine molecular rhythms?
Found a circadian transcription in human lung
Most dataset in cancer from one clinical trial so there might need to be more trials conducted to take into consideration circadian rhythms

Stratifying patients by live-cell biomarkers with random-forest decision trees

Guy Fish CEO Cellanyx Diagnostics

Some clinicians feel we may be overdiagnosing and overtreating certain cancers, especially the indolent disease
Platform published in 2018 paper (Clinical Proof-of-concept of a Novel Platform Utilizing Biopsy-derived Live Single Cells, Phenotypic Biomarkers, and Machine Learning Toward a Precision Risk Stratification Test for Prostate Cancer Grade Groups 1 and 2 (Gleason 3 + 3 and 3 + 4)
Problem: their information knowledgebase based on cultured cells
Their platform first used to stratify prostate cancer

Tuesday, June 23

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT

Virtual Educational Session

Tumor Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology/Genetics, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Prevention Research

The Wound Healing that Never Heals: The Tumor Microenvironment (TME) in Cancer Progression

This educational session focuses on the chronic wound healing, fibrosis, and cancer “triad.” It emphasizes the similarities and differences seen in these conditions and attempts to clarify why sustained fibrosis commonly supports tumorigenesis. Importance will be placed on cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), vascularity, extracellular matrix (ECM), and chronic conditions like aging. Dr. Dvorak will provide an historical insight into the triad field focusing on the importance of vascular permeability. Dr. Stewart will explain how chronic inflammatory conditions, such as the aging tumor microenvironment (TME), drive cancer progression. The session will close with a review by Dr. Cukierman of the roles that CAFs and self-produced ECMs play in enabling the signaling reciprocity observed between fibrosis and cancer in solid epithelial cancers, such as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.