A

Probabilistic pathway-based multimodal factor analysis

Bioinformatics, vol. 40, pp. i189–i198

Abstract

MOTIVATION: Multimodal profiling strategies promise to produce more informative insights into biomedical cohorts via the integration of the information each modality contributes. To perform this integration, however, the development of novel analytical strategies is needed. Multimodal profiling strategies often come at the expense of lower sample numbers, which can challenge methods to uncover shared signals across a cohort. Thus, factor analysis approaches are commonly used for the analysis of high-dimensional data in molecular biology, however, they typically do not yield representations that are directly interpretable, whereas many research questions often center around the analysis of pathways associated with specific observations. RESULTS: We develop PathFA, a novel approach for multimodal factor analysis over the space of pathways. PathFA produces integrative and interpretable views across multimodal profiling technologies, which allow for the derivation of concrete hypotheses. PathFA combines a pathway-learning approach with integrative multimodal capability under a Bayesian procedure that is efficient, hyper-parameter free, and able to automatically infer observation noise from the data. We demonstrate strong performance on small sample sizes within our simulation framework and on matched proteomics and transcriptomics profiles from real tumor samples taken from the Swiss Tumor Profiler consortium. On a subcohort of melanoma patients, PathFA recovers pathway activity that has been independently associated with poor outcome. We further demonstrate the ability of this approach to identify pathways associated with the presence of specific cell-types as well as tumor heterogeneity. Our results show that we capture known biology, making it well suited for analyzing multimodal sample cohorts. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The tool is implemented in python and available at https://github.com/ratschlab/path-fa.

Authors 91

  1. Alexander Immer corresponding

    ETH Zurich · Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems , 72076 Tübingen, Germany

  2. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  3. University of Basel · University Hospital of Basel

    Affiliation as printed

    Ovarian Cancer Research, Department of Biomedicine, University Hospital Basel and University of Basel , 4031 Basel, Switzerland

  4. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  5. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  6. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich · Institute of Translational Medicine

    Affiliation as printed

    ETH PHRT Swiss Multi-Omics Center (SMOC) , 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Institute of Translational Medicine, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich , 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  7. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich · Institute of Translational Medicine

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Translational Medicine, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich , 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  8. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich · Institute of Translational Medicine

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Translational Medicine, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich , 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  9. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich · Institute of Translational Medicine

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Translational Medicine, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  10. ETH Zurich · Essen University Hospital · Universitätsklinikum Aachen · University Hospital Cologne · RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Cancer Research Center Cologne Essen, University Hospital Cologne , 50937 Cologne, Germany

    Joint Research Center for Computational Biomedicine, University Hospital RWTH Aachen , 52074 Aachen, Germany

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Cancer Research Center Cologne Essen, University Hospital Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany

    ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Joint Research Center for Computational Biomedicine, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, 52074 Aachen, Germany � Corresponding author. Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science,

  11. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  12. ETH Zurich · Essen University Hospital · Universitätsklinikum Aachen · University Hospital Cologne · RWTH Aachen University

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Cancer Research Center Cologne Essen, University Hospital Cologne, 50937 Cologne, Germany

    ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Joint Research Center for Computational Biomedicine, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, 52074 Aachen, Germany � Corresponding author. Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science,

  13. SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

  14. ETH Zurich · Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

    Affiliation as printed

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 72076 T € ubingen, Germany

  15. Gunnar Rätsch corresponding

    SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics · ETH Zurich · University Hospital Zurich

    Affiliation as printed

    AI Center at ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich , 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Biomedical Informatics Research, University Hospital Zurich , 8006 Zurich, Switzerland

    Department of Biology, ETH Zurich , 8049 Zurich, Switzerland

    Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

    Biomedical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

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References 25