STRATEGY & DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH
INTEGRATIVE ASSOCIATIVE CLASSIFICATION FOR CANCER BIOMARKER DISCOVERY Integrative analysis of microarray data with prior biological knowledge is a promising approach to discover reliable and accurate cancer biomarkers. Associative classification is widely used in data mining and has great potential in cancer biomarker discovery for identifying associated genes with interpretable biological information. Ong Huey Fang, Lecturer, School of Information Technology, Monash University
B
iomarkers or biological markers cover a wide range of substances that can be measured from body tissues, cells, blood or fluid. For instance, a cell expresses genes when they are required for biological processes, and the measurement of gene expressions under different physiological conditions provide essential clues of gene functions. Therefore, biomarkers play essential roles in understanding complex biological mechanisms, as well as in diagnosis, prognosis and
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treatment of diseases, such as cancer. The desirable characteristics for ideal cancer biomarkers are non-invasive, low cost, simple to perform, discriminative, informative and produce high accuracy, sensitivity and specificity in clinical applications. Nevertheless, having these ideal characteristics remain as challenges in cancer biomarker discovery. Low specificity is the situation when a test yields false-positive results, causing unnecessary anxiety and treatment to a patient. While,
low sensitivity is the situation when a test yields false-negative results, which cause a false sense of security to a patient. Figure 1 shows the possible applications of cancer biomarkers and their respective role. Biomarker discovery is the process of identifying and measuring the intrinsic features of high-throughput molecular profiling data, such as microarray data, or also known as gene expression data. Microarray data analysis is a powerful preclinical exploratory study for discov-
Screening
Diagnosis
Staging
Prognosis
Prediction
Monitoring
Detect a cancer at its early stage, when there are no symptoms
Identify a cancer from its signs and symptoms
Determine the extent a cancer has spread within the body
Assess possible outcomes of a cancer, such as chances of survival, responses to treatment, and the likelihood of recurrence
Predict responses to different treatments
Monitor cancer recurrence and therapeutic responses
P H A RM A F O C U S A S I A
ISSUE 39 - 2020
