Investigating key players in tumor micro-environment interactions
Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is considered to be one of the major causes of mortality in women. There has been increasing evidence that interactions between the tumor epithelium and stroma contribute to tumor progression, invasion, and metastasis. Recent biological and clinical studies support the fact that stroma is one of the main barriers to treat aggressive tumors, due to stroma-induced drug resistance.
In this talk, I will present a novel computational framework to identify key players that participate in the tumor epithelium and stromal interactions. A genome-wide network is constructed by estimating pairwise co-expression interactions between the tumor epithelium and tumor stroma along with their normal counterparts. We then analyzed the network to understand the global differences in the normal and tumor epithelium-stroma samples, key hubs, GO terms. One of the main conclusions of this work is that we have confirmed the enrichment of feedback self-loops in tumor network for TNBC patients. Also, we have developed a "proof of principle" to analyze and characterize undirected networks using the L1000 genes. This work could potentially enhance our understanding of biological mechanisms involved in cancer progression, but could also be used to find new therapeutic targets that inhibit the co-dependencies between tumor and its microenvironment.
