Stamford-based Sema4, working in partnership with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, have published a study in Nature Communications using network modeling to identify novel targets for treating patients with early-stage invasive lung adenocarcinoma, the most common lung cancer among American patients.
Because of its often-aggressive nature, early diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma is critical to improving the chances for survival. The new study disentangles the molecular mechanisms underlying tumor invasion in early-stage lung adenocarcinoma to improve patients”™ diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
“The approaches to diagnosing and treating early-stage lung adenocarcinoma are evolving and are based upon advances in understanding the biology and clinical activities of these tumors,” said Charles Powell, Janice and Coleman Rabin Professor of Medicine and Chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai and a senior author on the paper. “Our work using novel network approaches in collaboration with Sema4 to identify signatures of invasiveness and to identify drugs that can intercept progression of these cancers should contribute to advancing the understanding and outcomes for this cancer.”
In the collaborative study that builds upon the NIH-funded lung cancer research program in Dr. Powell”™s laboratory, researchers from Icahn Mount Sinai collected early-stage lung adenocarcinoma tumor samples and sequenced their RNA. Sema4 then analyzed the network of gene-gene interactions based on this sequencing data, resulting in the identification of a gene expression signature that can distinguish between invasive and noninvasive tumors.
“This new paper demonstrates how the synergism of in silico, in vitro, and in vivo technologies can accelerate the drug discovery process,” said Eric Schadt, founder and CEO at Sema4 and an author on the paper. “By performing an integrative network analysis of early-stage lung adenocarcinoma, together with our partners at Icahn Mount Sinai, we were able to identify a gene expression signature capable of stratifying patients for treatment and a potential novel therapeutic for these patients.”
“Sema4”™s advanced predictive modeling and data science expertise uniquely position us to deliver value to and accelerate discovery for collaborators in the biopharma, healthcare, and research worlds,” added Gustavo Stolovitzky, chief science officer at Sema4. “Through this collaboration, we again proved the value of our integrative network modeling by uncovering a novel way to stratify early-stage lung adenocarcinomas into indolent and aggressive forms and positing a potential therapeutic to help patients with the aggressive type. Dependent upon clinical validation, genomic testing for the invasiveness signature could one day be incorporated into our Sema4 Signal portfolio of precision oncology solutions to help guide treatment decisions for patients with aggressive early-stage lung adenocarcinoma.”
Photo: Picpedia
