A review of machine learning approaches for drug synergy prediction in cancer.

Journal: Briefings in bioinformatics
Published Date:

Abstract

Combinational pharmacotherapy with the synergistic/additive effect is a powerful treatment strategy for complex diseases such as malignancies. Identifying synergistic combinations with various compounds and structures requires testing a large number of compound combinations. However, in practice, examining different compounds by in vivo and in vitro approaches is costly, infeasible and challenging. In the last decades, significant success has been achieved by expanding computational methods in different pharmacological and bioinformatics domains. As promising tools, computational approaches such as machine learning algorithms (MLAs) are used for prioritizing combinational pharmacotherapies. This review aims to provide the models developed to predict synergistic drug combinations in cancer by MLAs with various information, including gene expression, protein-protein interactions, metabolite interactions, pathways and pharmaceutical information such as chemical structure, molecular descriptor and drug-target interactions.

Authors

  • Anna Torkamannia
    Department of Health Information Technology, School of Management and Medical Informatics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
  • Yadollah Omidi
    Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA.
  • Reza Ferdousi
    Department of Health Information Technology, School of Management and Medical Informatics, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.