MINI REVIEW article

Front. Oncol., 30 June 2020

Sec. Cancer Genetics

Volume 10 - 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2020.01030

Integrated Multi-Omics Analyses in Oncology: A Review of Machine Learning Methods and Tools

  • 1. Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

  • 2. Center for Innovation in Brain Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

  • 3. Department of Neurology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

  • 4. Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States

  • 5. Centre for Health Informatics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

  • 6. The Manchester Molecular Pathology Innovation Centre, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Abstract

In recent years, high-throughput sequencing technologies provide unprecedented opportunity to depict cancer samples at multiple molecular levels. The integration and analysis of these multi-omics datasets is a crucial and critical step to gain actionable knowledge in a precision medicine framework. This paper explores recent data-driven methodologies that have been developed and applied to respond major challenges of stratified medicine in oncology, including patients' phenotyping, biomarker discovery, and drug repurposing. We systematically retrieved peer-reviewed journals published from 2014 to 2019, select and thoroughly describe the tools presenting the most promising innovations regarding the integration of heterogeneous data, the machine learning methodologies that successfully tackled the complexity of multi-omics data, and the frameworks to deliver actionable results for clinical practice. The review is organized according to the applied methods: Deep learning, Network-based methods, Clustering, Features Extraction, and Transformation, Factorization. We provide an overview of the tools available in each methodological group and underline the relationship among the different categories. Our analysis revealed how multi-omics datasets could be exploited to drive precision oncology, but also current limitations in the development of multi-omics data integration.

Introduction

The integration and analysis of high-throughput molecular assays is a major focus for precision medicine in enabling the understanding of patient and disease specific variations. Integrated approaches allow for comprehensive views of genetic, biochemical, metabolic, proteomic, and epigenetic processes underlying a disease that, otherwise, could not be fully investigated by single-omics approaches. Computational multi-omics approaches are based on machine learning techniques and typically aim at classifying patients into cancer subtypes (15), designed for biomarker discovery and drug repurposing (6, 7).

While complexities underling cancer still hampers our understanding of how this disease arises and progresses (8), multi-omics approaches have been suggested as promising tools to dissect patient's dysfunctions in multiple biological systems that may be altered by cancer mechanisms (9).

Several efforts have been made to generate comprehensive multi-omics profiles of cancer patients. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA, https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/) provides detailed clinical, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics data on about 20,000 subjects and plans to generate additional data in the next years for a variety of cancer types. Analysis of datasets generated by multi-omics sequencing requires the development of computational approaches spanning from data integration (10), statistical methods, and artificial intelligence systems to gain actionable knowledge from data.

Here we present a descriptive overview on recent multi-omics approaches in oncology, which summarizes current state-of-art in multi-omics data analysis, relevant topics in terms of machine learning approaches, and aims of each survey, such as disease subtyping, or patient similarity. We provide an overview on each methodology group, while then focusing on publicly available tools.

Methods

Search Strategy

We retrieved publications by querying the Scopus database as: (cancer OR tumor OR tumor OR oncolog*)AND(multi-omic*OR multiomic*OR mixomic*)AND(“machine learning” OR “data fusion” OR “network analysis”).

Eligibility Criteria

Since other review covered previous years (10, 11) we included peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2014 to 2020 (last query 04-22-2020). If a study appears in multiple publications, only the latest version was included. We selected relevant studies by screening titles and abstracts, then analyzing full-texts. We excluded papers accordingly to the following criteria:

  • Review articles;

  • Studies focused on non-human subjects;

  • Studies intended to validate and/or apply previously developed tools;

  • Studies published in conference proceedings.

  • Studies that integrate different measurement of the same type of omics (such as, only proteomics measurement).

Categories and Analyses

For each article, we extracted the publication year and the number of citations. We categorize the selected publications according to:

  • Data inputs (i.e., types of omics);

  • Research Aims:

    • Stratified Medicine for subgroup discovery: studies aimed at finding groups of patients that exhibit different therapeutic/prognostic outcomes;

    • Biomarker discovery: studies that detect -omics characteristics indicating a disease state;

    • Pathways analysis: studies aimed at discovering relation among -omics terms, such as genes or proteins in normal and cancer condition;

    • Drug repurposing/discovery: studies aimed at identifying new drugs to or existing effective drugs originally developed for other conditions;

  • Methods and algorithms: Deep network, Networks-based methods (Bayesian and Heuristic Networks), Clustering, Features Extraction, Feature Transformation, Factorization.

We highlight successful approaches for each criterion and identify promising ones that are either nascent or unexplored as potential opportunities.

Results

We retrieved 270 papers. The Scopus query did not retrieve 24 relevant works that were added manually based on our previous knowledge. After a screening of papers' abstracts, 58 papers meeting our criteria were selected. Retrieved papers were organized into a matrix table (Table 1) and analyzed with respect to the aforementioned categories. As highlighted in Figure 1A, categories are not mutually exclusive, thus we show links between groups, which relate papers applying multiple methods. Figure 1B depicts all considered publications by year of publication and the Field-Weighted Citation Impact, a metric that allows comparison of papers accounting for year of publication and number citations. Studies are shown with different colors and shapes according to method used and the aim/output type.

Table 1

ReferencesReferences in Figure 1Year#Citation 22/04/2020Scopus field-weighted citation impactMethodOmicsAimTool release
Agarwal et al. (12)1201520.34NetworkGenomics, transcriptomicsBiomarker discovery
Amar and Shamir (13)22014160.70NetworkProteomics, genomicsPathways analysisModMap tool
Ao et al. (14)32016171.11NetworkGenomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Argelaguet et al. (15)420195714.40Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identificationR package MOFAtools
Wang et al. (16)5201441012.89NetworkTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identificationR and MATLAB code http://compbio.cs.toronto.edu/SNF/
Beal et al. (17)6201821.25NetworkTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identificationhttps://github.com/sysbio-curie/PROFILE
Benfeitas et al. (18)7201995.17ClusteringTranscriptomics, proteomics, metabolomicsSubgroup identification
Bonnet et al. (19)82015292.50NetworkGenomics, transcriptomicsBiomarker discoveryLemon-Tree—command-line tool in Java http://lemon-tree.googlecode.com
Cancemi et al. (20)9201840.82NetworkTranscriptomics, proteomicsPathways analysis
Cavalli et al. (21)10201721321.09ClusteringEpigenomics, genomics, transcriptomicsSubgroup identification
Champion et al. (22)11201861NetworkGenomics, epigenomicsBiomarker discoveryAMARETTO R package https://bitbucket.org/gevaertlab/pancanceramaretto
Chaudhary et al. (23)1220188214.79Deep networkTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Cho et al. (24)132016486.65NetworkGenomics, proteomicsPathways analysisMashup tool MATLAB code http://cb.csail.mit.edu/cb/mashup/
Costa et al. (25)14201840.58NetworkGenomics, epigenomicsPathways analysis
Costello et al. (26)15201427114.12Feature transformationGenomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, proteomicsSubgroup identification (drug response)
Dimitrakopoulos et al. (27)162018296.67NetworkGenomics, transcriptomics, proteomicsPathway analysishttps://github.com/cbg-ethz/netics
Drabovich et al. (28)17201910.53Feature extractionTranscriptomics, proteomics, secretomics, tissue specificSubgroup identification
Francescatto et al. (29)18201861.59Deep networkGenomics, transcriptomicsSubgroup identification
Gabasova et al. (30)19201760.86ClusteringTranscriptomics, proteomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identificationClusternomics R package https://github.com/evelinag/clusternomics
Gao et al. (31)20201900FactorizationTranscriptomics, genomicsBiomarker discovery
Griffin et al. (32)21201810.29NetworkTranscriptomics, epigenomicsBiomarker discovery
Hoadley et al. (33)22201466832.88ClusteringProteomics, transcriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identification
Hua et al. (34)23201620.17NetworkGenomics, epigenomicsBiomarker discovery
Huang et al. (35)24201964.44NetworkGenomics, transcriptomics, epigenomicsDrug repurposing/discoveryDrugComboExplorer tool https://github.com/Roosevelt-PKU/drugcombinationprediction
Huang et al. (36)25201984.37Deep networkTranscriptomicsSubgroup identificationSALMON source code https://github.com/huangzhii/SALMON/
Kim et al. (37)26201730.16NetworkTranscriptomics, proteomicsDrug repurposing/discovery
Kim et al. (38)27201820.40Feature extractionGenomics, transcriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Kim et al. (39)28201900Feature extractionGenomics, transcriptomicsPathways analysis
Koh et al. (40)29201921.48NetworkTranscriptomics, proteomicsSubgroup identificationiOmicsPASS https://github.com/cssblab/iOmicsPASS
Lee et al. (41)302018213.46NetworkGenomics, transcriptomicsDrug repurposing/discovery
Liang et al. (42)312015865.96Deep networkTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
List et al. (3)322014202.51Feature extractionTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Luo et al. (43)33201900ClusteringTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identification
Ma and Zhang (44)34201840.71ClusteringTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSimilarityAFN is part of the Bioconductor R package https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/ANF.html
Mariette and Villa-Vialaneix (45)35201881.90Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identificationR package mixKernel
Meng et al. (46)362014795.29Feature transformationTranscriptomics, proteomicsSubgroup identificationR package omicade4
Mo et al. (47)372017187.03Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identificationR package iClusterPlus
Nguyen et al. (48)382017202.03ClusteringTranscriptomics, epigenomics, genomicsSubgroup identification
O'Connell and Lock (49)392016131.21Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identificationR Package r.jive
Pai et al. (50)40201965.23Feature extractionTranscriptomics, metabolomics, genomicsSimilarity
Raphael et al. (51)41201726926.77NetworkTranscriptomics, genomics, proteomicsSubgroup identification
Rappoport et al. (52)42201921.48ClusteringTranscriptomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Ray et al. (4)432014302.34Bayesian networkGenomics, epigenomicsBiomarker discoveryMATLAB code https://sites.google.com/site/jointgenomics/
Rohart et al. (53)44201728538.04Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomics, proteomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identificationR package Mixomics
Sharifi-Noghabi et al. (54)45201926.91Deep networkGenomics, transcriptomicsSubgroup identification (drug response)https://github.com/hosseinshn/MOLI
Sehgal et al. (55)46201560.36NetworkTranscriptomicsPathways analysis
Song et al. (56)47201921.06Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomics, proteomicsBiomarker discoveryR package iProFun
Speicher and Pfeifer (57)482015345.83ClusteringGenomics, transcriptomicsSubgroup identification
Vitali et al. (58)492016161.51NetworkProteomics, transcriptomicsDrug repurposing/discovery
Woo et al. (59)502017302.97ClusteringGenomics, epigenomicsSubgroup identification
Wu et al. (60)512015190.83ClusteringGenomics, transcriptomicsSubgroup identification
Yang et al. (61)52201921.23NetworkEpigenomics, transcriptomicsBiomarker discovery
Yuan et al. (62)53201832.04NetworkGenomics, transcriptomics, epigenomicsBiomarker discovery
Wang et al. (63)54201861NetworkGenomics, transcriptomicsBiomarker discovery
Zhang et al. (64)55201891.58Deep networkTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identification
Zhou et al. (65)56201520.18NetworkGenomics, epigenomics, proteomicsBiomarker discovery
Zhu et al. (66)572017201.52Feature transformationTranscriptomics, genomicsSubgroup identification
Žitnik and Zupan (67)582015142.50NetworkTranscriptomics, genomicsBiomarker discovery

Selected papers and categories.

Figure 1

In the following sections, we describe the methodological categories that emerged from our literature review. For each methodological category, particular emphasis is placed on studies providing tools that can be exploited by other users, either with their own data or to reproduce their results.

Network-Based Methods

Network-based approaches were exploited to detect, reconstruct and study interactions among sub network modules (13, 19, 22, 25, 40); to assess functional correlation among multi-omics entities (12, 14, 20, 55, 61, 62); to integrate and fuse networks to create comprehensive view of a disease (16, 24, 32, 37, 41, 63, 65). A few work leverage Bayesian methods (4, 34) or Markov models (17, 67).

Some approaches integrate network analysis within frameworks that apply multiple algorithms (35, 51, 58). In (51) a multi-platform analysis exploited for profiling pancreatic adenocarcinoma, includes clustering and Similarity Network Fusion to integrate genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data from the different platforms. In (58) authors develop a framework for drug repurposing and multi-target therapies by constructing a protein network for the disease under study and fusing several data sources. In (27), a functional interaction network predicts variations in expressions caused by genomic alterations, and it is exploited to prioritize cancer genes. Few others interesting approaches (16, 19) have been discussed in (10).

iOmicsPass

iOmicsPASS (40) implements a network-based method for integrating multi-omics profiles over genome-scale biological networks. The tool provides analysis components to transform qualitative multi-omics data into scores for biological interaction, then it uses the resulting scores as input to select predictive sub-networks; finally, it selects predictive edges for phenotypic groups using a modified nearest shrunken centroid algorithm. Authors validate iOmicsPASS on Breast Invasive Ductal Carcinoma data, integrating mRNA expression, and protein abundance, with and without the normalization of the mRNA data by the DNA Copy Number Variation (CNV). When compared with the original nearest shrunken centroid classification algorithm, iOmicsPASS outperform the baseline method, indicating the importance of selecting predictive signature forms densely connected sub networks, thus limiting the search space of predictive features to known interactions.

AMARETTO

Amaretto (22) is an algorithm developed multiple omics profiles integration across different type of cancers. Authors illustrate how the algorithm identifies cancer driver genes based on multi-omics data fusion and detects subnetworks of modules across all cancers. The algorithm identifies potential cancer driver genes by investigating significant correlations between methylation, CNV and gene expression (GE) data. When the driver genes are identified it constructs a module network connecting them with the co-expressed target genes they control. This constricts a pan-cancer network that is able to identify novel pancancer driver genes.

DrugComboExplorer

DrugComboExplorer (35) identifies candidate drug combinations targeting cancer driver signaling networks by processing DNA sequencing, CNV, DNA methylation, and RNA-seq data from individual cancer patients using an integrated pipeline of algorithms. The pipeline is based on two components: the first one extracts dysregulated networks from transcriptome and methylation profiles of specific patients using bootstrapping-based simulated annealing and weighted co-expression network analysis. The second component generates a driver network signatures for each drug, evaluates synergistic effects of drug combinations on different driver signaling networks and ranks drug combinations according the synergistic effects. In (35) authors apply DrugComboExplorer on diffuse large B-cell-lymphoma and prostate cancer, demonstrating the ability of the tool to discover synergistic drug combinations and its higher prediction accuracy compared with existing computational approaches.

Deep Network

Deep Networks (DNs) are widely used to analyse omics-data (68). In a multi-omics scenario, clustering on DNs features showed different survival groups in neuroblastoma and liver cancer (23, 29, 64). In (42) authors integrated GE, methylation and miRNA in a restricted Boltzmann machine, where hidden layers represent different survival groups in breast cancer patients. Subnetworks are used in (54) to project different omics views in latent spaces that are further concatenated and fed into a final network to predict drug response.

SALMON

SALMON (Survival Analysis Learning with Multi-Omics Neural Networks) is a Deep Learning framework that integrates omics-data (mRNA and miRNA), clinical features and cancer biomarkers (36). Instead of feeding a neural network with mRNA and miRNA data, SALMON takes as input the eigengene matrices derived from co-expression analysis. Thus, it overcomes the high-dimensionality problem, reducing input features of about 99%. Authors assume that mRNA and miRNA data affect survival outcome independently, therefore the two corresponding eigengene matrices are connected to two different hidden layers whose output is linked to the final network with a Cox proportional hazards regression network. Results on breast cancer carcinoma patients showed improvements in survival prediction ability compared to single-omics.

Clustering

Multi-omics clustering approaches are exploited to detect regularities and patterns that reveal different cancer molecular subtypes (21, 33, 43, 48, 57, 60) and prognostic groups in hepatocellular carcinoma (59). In (18) consensus clustering is performed on transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics data to stratify patients with hepatocellular carcinoma based on their redox response. Clustering applications are often preceded by feature selection and/or feature transformation of multi-omics data, such as factorization, low rank approximation, and neural network. An exhaustive review on multi-omics integrative clustering approaches can be found in (69).

Nemo

NEMO (NEighborhood based Multi-Omics clustering) is a similarity-based tool that computes inter-patient similarity matrices for each omics through a radial basis function kernel. Spectral clustering is performed on the resulting average similarity matrix (52). NEMO addresses the problem of partial datasets, where not all the omics are measured for all the patients, and the final average matrix is computed on the observed omics values, without performing imputation. NEMO clustering shows higher performance compared to the same approach with imputed data, while on TCGA cancer datasets it detects significant differences in survival for six out of 10 cancer types.

Clusternomics

The main assumption of multi-omics clustering approaches relies on the existence of a consistent clustering structure across heterogeneous datasets. Alternatively, in (30) authors introduced the context-dependent clustering Clusternomics. Each omics is seen as a context describing a particular aspect of the underlying biological process. The global clustering structure is inferred from the combination of Bayesian clustering assignments. Then, by separating cluster assignment on two levels, Clusternomics allows the number of clusters to vary on local or global structure. Its performances are evaluated on a simulated dataset, where it showed higher Adjuster Rank Index compared to other clustering techniques, but also on breast, lung and kidney cancer from TCGA repository, where it identified clinically meaningful clusters.

Affinity Network Fusion

Affinity Network Fusion (AFN) (44) is both a clustering and classification technique that applies graph clustering to a patient affinity matrix incorporating information from multiple views. For each omic, after feature selection and/or transformation, AFN computes patient pair-wise distances. kNN Graph Kernel applied to the distance metric creates a patient affinity matrix for each view. The final affinity matrix is the weighted sum of the computed affinity matrices. AFN approach showed improved clustering performance in detecting cancer subtypes on several TCGA datasets when compared to its application in single omics.

Feature Extraction

In multi-omics integration, variable selection to reduce the dimensionality of the omics dataset has a dominant role [(70), Figure 1A]. Recursive feature elimination was exploited to select subsets of expressed genes and methylation data to classify breast cancer disease subtypes with a Random Forest (3). Genes prioritization allowed prognosis prediction in different cancer types from epigenomics, transcriptomics, and genomics data (38), and biomarker discovery in prostate cancer (28). In (39) authors weight gene-gene interaction from transcriptomics and genomics data with a random walked-based method to select the most important interaction for survival prediction in breast cancer and neuroblastoma patients.

netDX

netDx is an algorithm that performs feature selection on Patient Similarity Networks (PSN) to classify patients in different prognostic groups (50). A PSN is built for each omics such that nodes represent patients and edges stand for the similarity of two nodes in the given view. Then netDx identifies which networks (i.e., which omics) strongly relate high- and low- risk patients through the GeneMANIA algorithm (71), which solves a regression problem to maximize the edges that connect query patients. Finally, each network is weighted according to its ability to relate patients of the same group and networks whose score exceeds a defined threshold are selected and combined in a single network by averaging their similarity scores. Authors benchmarked netDx against several machine-learning methods to predict survival outcomes on PanCancer TCGA multi-omics datasets, showing comparable results. On a breast cancer dataset, netDx selected features correspond to pathways known to be dysregulated in this type of cancer.

Feature Transformation

Feature transformation (FT) refers to algorithms that replace existing features with new features still function of the original ones. As shown in Figure 1B, the majority of FT techniques aims at identifying cancer subtypes, biomarkers, omics-signatures, and key features from multi-omics data. Zhu et al. (66) proposed a kernel machine-learning method for a pan-cancer prognostic assessment by integrating multi-omics data. This work is particularly interesting since it's the only FT method we reviewed that allows multi-omics profile integration individually and in combination with clinical factors. A Kernel-based approach, combined with non-linear regression and Bayesian inference, resulted to be the best performing algorithm in a drug sensitivity prediction challenge (26).

In the following, we will report selected FT approaches, although few other tools for subgroup discovery, such as iClusterBayes (47), Multi-Omics Factor Analysis (15), JIVE (49), and MCIA (46), are available.

MixOmics

One of the most recent and biggest efforts in this field resulted in an R package called mixOmics (53). MixOmics allows for multivariate analysis of omics data including data exploration, dimension reduction, and visualization. mixOmics can be applied in numerous of studies with different aims such as integration and biomarker identification from multi-omics studies. The package includes two different types of multi-omics integration. One aimed at integrating different type of omics data of the same biological samples, while the second focus on integrating independent data measured on the same predictors to increase sample size and statistical power (53). Both frameworks aim at extracting biologically relevant features, [i.e., molecular signatures, by applying FT techniques (53)]. In (53) authors presented the results on 150 samples of mRNA, miRNA and proteomics breast cancer data and showed its ability to correctly discriminate three types of breast cancers.

mixKernel

mixKernel (45) is a R package compatible with mixOmics, which allows integration of multiple datasets by representing each dataset through a kernel that provides pairwise information between samples. The single kernels are then combined into one meta-kernel in an unsupervised framework. These new meta-kernels can be used for exploratory analyses, such as clustering or more sophisticated analysis to get insights into the data integrated. The authors showed better performances of mixKernel applied to mRNA, miRNAs and methylation breast cancer data if compared with one kernel approach.

iProFun

iProFun (56) is a method aimed at elucidating proteogenomic functional consequences of CNV and methylation alterations. The authors integrated mRNA expression levels, global protein abundances, and phosphoprotein abundances of a certain cancer. The output consists in a list of genes whose CNVs and/or DNA methylations significantly influencing some or all of the data integrated. iProFun obtains summary statistics of data integrated based on a gene-level multiple linear regression. These statistics are then used to extract genes having a cascading effect of all cis-molecular traits of interests and genes whose functional regulations are unique at global protein levels. iProFun applied to ovarian cancer TCGA dataset showed its ability in extracting interesting genes that could be considered targets for future therapies.

Factorization

Traditional data mining methods are often inadequate to treat heterogeneous, sparse and noisy data such as multi-omics. Heavy pre-processing operations could modify, therefore loose, the inner structure of data coming from different sources. To discover latent characteristics hidden in huge amount of information, factorization techniques have been applied to highlight complex interactions among omics-data, hard to detect using standard approaches.

Gao et al. (31) developed an integrated Graph Regularized Non-negative Matrix Factorization model focused network construction by integrating gene expression data, CNV data, and methylation data. The authors used the factorization technique to decompose and fuse the multi-omics data. Then, by combining the results with network and mining analyses they showed how their method was able to find potential new cancer-related genes on two different TCGA datasets. Another method, based on factor analysis, aims at identifying latent factors in the multi-omics-data integrated in the model that can be used for subsequent analysis such as subgroup identification (15). Give its aim in extracting hidden features, we described this method in detail in the feature transformation section.

Discussion

Along with technological advances in high-throughput sequencing, which characterize multiple “omes” from biological samples, holistic systems for data integration and knowledge discovery with machine-learning algorithms are still under development. Precision oncology would greatly benefit from actionable knowledge gained from multi-omics assays. In this paper we provided an overview of recent works on this topic and highlight current achievements and limitations.

We reviewed relevant tools to perform analysis based on different combination of omics, and observed their growing numbers in recent years, indicating strong commitments to develop such tools. Several issues emerged, too. The majority of the proposed techniques were applied to TCGA dataset, and data integration was mainly focused on transcriptomics and genomics. Efforts should be devoted to make new data sources available to the research community (72), such as the UKBioBank (73) and DriverDBv3 (74), and to integrate other “omes,” such as metabolome, or patient-generated, and environmental data. Research in this field would greatly benefit from the development of databases specifically developed for containing and facilitating the analysis of multi-omics and clinical data, such as LinkedOmics (75). Another important improvement to increase usability and reproducibility would be to aim at developing methods that can be applied and generalized for all omics data type.

The complexity of multi-omics data analysis requires collaborative efforts among the clinical and machine-learning communities and the joint application of methodologies derived from heterogenous backgrounds. We noted that some promising methods, such as matrix-factorization have not been extensively exploited, while clustering and network-based approaches are the most extensively used, probably due to their flexibility and the possibility to be integrated in comprehensive frameworks that include feature extraction and transformation to deal with the curse of dimensionality. Deep learning methods, that are flexible and achieved outstanding results in other fields, are increasingly used, even though many works share the same “pipeline” (i.e., the exploitation of autoencoder hidden layers for clustering). Interestingly, the number open source tools have increased in the very last years (Figure 1B).

We are aware of some limitations of our review. An important aspect that has not been covered by this review is the quantitative comparison among tools (76), which could highlight possible overfitting (77) and issues that may prevent the actual translation of multi-omics approaches from bench to bedside. Although, by indicating works that provide a usable tool (Table 1), our review could be a starting point for a comprehensive quantitative comparison.

Statements

Author contributions

RB conceived the study. GN, FV, and AD run the analyses and wrote the article. NG and RB revised the article. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

This study was funded by Fondazione Regionale Ricerca Biomedica, Milan, Italy [FRRB project n. 2015-0042, Genomic profiling of rare hematologic malignancies, development of personalized medicine strategies, and their implementation into Rete Ematologica Lombarda (REL) clinical network] and by the NIHR Manchester BRC, MRC Molecular Pathology Node MMPathic (grant ref MR/N00583X/1).

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Simone Marini for his valuable help in the initial phases of the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

  • 1.

    ShenROlshenABLadanyiM. Integrative clustering of multiple genomic data types using a joint latent variable model with application to breast and lung cancer subtype analysis. Bioinformatics. (2009) 25:290612. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btp543

  • 2.

    LockEFHoadleyKAMarronJSNobelAB. Joint and individual variation explained (JIVE) for integrated analysis of multiple data types. Ann Appl Stat. (2013) 7:52342. 10.1214/12-AOAS597

  • 3.

    ListMHauschildA-CTanQKruseTAMollenhauerJBaumbachJet al. Classification of breast cancer subtypes by combining gene expression and DNA methylation data. J Integr Bioinform. (2014) 11:236. 10.2390/biecoll-jib-2014-236

  • 4.

    RayPZhengLLucasJCarinL. Bayesian joint analysis of heterogeneous genomics data. Bioinformatics. (2014) 30:13706. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btu064

  • 5.

    GligorijevićVMalod-DogninNPrŽuljN. Patient-specific data fusion for cancer stratification and personalised treatment. Pacific Symp Biocomput. (2016) 21:321332. 10.1142/9789814749411_0030

  • 6.

    GottliebASteinGYRuppinESharanR. PREDICT: a method for inferring novel drug indications with application to personalized medicine. Mol Syst Biol. (2011) 7:26. 10.1038/msb.2011.26

  • 7.

    NapolitanoFZhaoYMoreiraVMTagliaferriRKereJD'AmatoMet al. Drug repositioning: a machine-learning approach through data integration. J Cheminform. (2013) 5:30. 10.1186/1758-2946-5-30

  • 8.

    BrayFFerlayJSoerjomataramISiegelRLTorreLAJemalA. Global cancer statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA Cancer J Clin. (2018) 68:394424. 10.3322/caac.21492

  • 9.

    KnoxSS. From “omics” to complex disease: a systems biology approach to gene-environment interactions in cancer. Cancer Cell Int. (2010) 10:11. 10.1186/1475-2867-10-11

  • 10.

    HuangSChaudharyKGarmireLX. More is better: recent progress in multi-omics data integration methods. Front Genet. (2017) 8:84. 10.3389/fgene.2017.00084

  • 11.

    LiYWuFXNgomA. A review on machine learning principles for multi-view biological data integration. Brief Bioinform. (2018) 19:32540. 10.1093/bib/bbw113

  • 12.

    AgarwalMAdhilMTalukderAK. Multi-omics multi-scale big data analytics for cancer genomics. Lect Notes Comput Sci. (2015) 9498:22843. 10.1007/978-3-319-27057-9_16

  • 13.

    AmarDShamirR. Constructing module maps for integrated analysis of heterogeneous biological networks. Nucleic Acids Res. (2014) 42:420819. 10.1093/nar/gku102

  • 14.

    AoLSongXLiXTongMGuoYLiJet al. An individualized prognostic signature and multi-omics distinction for early stage hepatocellular carcinoma patients with surgical resection. Oncotarget. (2016) 7:24097110. 10.18632/oncotarget.8212

  • 15.

    ArgelaguetRVeltenBArnolDDietrichSZenzTMarioniJCet al. Multi-Omics Factor Analysis—a framework for unsupervised integration of multi-omics data sets. Mol Syst Biol. (2018) 14:e8124. 10.15252/msb.20178124

  • 16.

    WangBMezliniAMDemirFFiumeMTuZBrudnoMet al. Similarity network fusion for aggregating data types on a genomic scale. Nat Methods. (2014) 11:3337. 10.1038/nmeth.2810

  • 17.

    BealJMontagudATraynardPBarillotECalzoneL. Personalization of logical models with multi-omics data allows clinical stratification of patients. Front Physiol. (2019) 9:1965. 10.3389/fphys.2018.01965

  • 18.

    BenfeitasRBidkhoriGMukhopadhyayBKlevstigMArifMZhangCet al. Characterization of heterogeneous redox responses in hepatocellular carcinoma patients using network analysis. EBioMedicine. (2019) 40:47187. 10.1016/j.ebiom.2018.12.057

  • 19.

    BonnetECalzoneLMichoelT. Integrative multi-omics module network inference with lemon-tree. PLoS Comput Biol. (2015) 11:3983. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003983

  • 20.

    CancemiPButtacavoliMCaraGDAlbaneseNNBivonaSPucci-MinafraIet al. A multiomics analysis of S100 protein family in breast cancer. Oncotarget. (2018) 9:2906481. 10.18632/oncotarget.25561

  • 21.

    CavalliFMGRemkeMRampasekLPeacockJShihDJHLuuBet al. Intertumoral heterogeneity within medulloblastoma subgroups. Cancer Cell. (2017) 31:73754.e6. 10.1016/j.ccell.2017.05.005

  • 22.

    ChampionMBrennanKCroonenborghsTGentlesAJPochetNGevaertO. Module analysis captures pancancer genetically and epigenetically deregulated cancer driver genes for smoking and antiviral response. EBioMedicine. (2018) 27:15666. 10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.11.028

  • 23.

    ChaudharyKPoirionOBLuLGarmireLX. Deep learning–based multi-omics integration robustly predicts survival in liver cancer. Clin Cancer Res. (2018) 24:124859. 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-17-0853

  • 24.

    ChoHBergerBPengJ. Compact integration of multi-network topology for functional analysis of genes. Cell Syst. (2016) 3:5408.e5. 10.1016/j.cels.2016.10.017

  • 25.

    CostaRLBoroniMSoaresMA. Distinct co-expression networks using multi-omic data reveal novel interventional targets in HPV-positive and negative head-and-neck squamous cell cancer. Sci Rep. (2018) 8:5. 10.1038/s41598-018-33498-5

  • 26.

    CostelloJCHeiserLMGeorgiiEGönenMMendenMPWangNJet al. A community effort to assess and improve drug sensitivity prediction algorithms. Nat Biotechnol. (2014) 32:120212. 10.1038/nbt.2877

  • 27.

    DimitrakopoulosCHindupurSKHafligerLBehrJMontazeriHHallMNet al. Network-based integration of multi-omics data for prioritizing cancer genes. Bioinformatics. (2018) 34:24418. 10.1093/bioinformatics/bty148

  • 28.

    DrabovichAPSaraonPDrabovichMKarakostaTDDimitromanolakisAHyndmanMEet al. Multi-omics biomarker pipeline reveals elevated levels of protein-glutamine gamma-glutamyltransferase 4 in seminal plasma of prostate cancer patients. Mol Cell Proteomics. (2019) 18:180723. 10.1074/mcp.RA119.001612

  • 29.

    FrancescattoMChiericiMRezvan DezfooliSZandonàAJurmanGFurlanelloCet al. Multi-omics integration for neuroblastoma clinical endpoint prediction. Biol Direct. (2018) 13:8. 10.1186/s13062-018-0207-8

  • 30.

    GabasovaEReidJWernischL. Clusternomics: integrative context-dependent clustering for heterogeneous datasets. PLoS Comput Biol. (2017) 13:e1005781. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005781

  • 31.

    GaoY-LHouM-XLiuJ-XKongX-Z. An integrated graph regularized non-negative matrix factorization model for gene co-expression network analysis. IEEE Access. (2019) 7:126594602. 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2939405

  • 32.

    GriffinPJZhangYJohnsonWEKolaczykED. Detection of multiple perturbations in multi-omics biological networks. Biometrics. (2018) 74:135161. 10.1111/biom.12893

  • 33.

    HoadleyKAYauCWolfDMCherniackADTamboreroDNgSet al. Multiplatform analysis of 12 cancer types reveals molecular classification within and across tissues of origin. Cell. (2014) 158:92944. 10.1016/j.cell.2014.06.049

  • 34.

    HuaLZhengWYXiaHZhouP. Detecting the potential cancer association or metastasis by multi-omics data analysis. Genet Mol Res. (2016) 15:e038987. 10.4238/gmr.15038987

  • 35.

    HuangLBrunellDStephanCMancusoJYuXHeBet al. Driver network as a biomarker: systematic integration and network modeling of multi-omics data to derive driver signaling pathways for drug combination prediction. Bioinformatics. (2019) 35:370917. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz109

  • 36.

    HuangZZhanXXiangSJohnsonTSHelmBYuCYet al. Salmon: survival analysis learning with multi-omics neural networks on breast cancer. Front Genet. (2019) 10:166. 10.3389/fgene.2019.00166

  • 37.

    KimJYLeeHWooJYueWKimKChoiSet al. Reconstruction of pathway modification induced by nicotinamide using multi-omic network analyses in triple negative breast cancer. Sci Rep. (2017) 7:7. 10.1038/s41598-017-03322-7

  • 38.

    KimMOhIAhnJ. An improved method for prediction of cancer prognosis by network learning. Genes. (2018) 9:111. 10.3390/genes9100478

  • 39.

    KimSYJeongHHKimJMoonJHSohnKA. Robust pathway-based multi-omics data integration using directed random walks for survival prediction in multiple cancer studies. Biol Direct. (2019) 14:8. 10.1186/s13062-019-0239-8

  • 40.

    KohHWLFerminDVogelCChoiKPEwingRMChoiHet al. iOmicsPASS: network-based integration of multiomics data for predictive subnetwork discovery. npj Syst Biol Appl. (2019) 5:22. 10.1038/s41540-019-0099-y

  • 41.

    LeeS-ICelikSLogsdonBALundbergSMMartinsTJOehlerVGet al. A machine learning approach to integrate big data for precision medicine in acute myeloid leukemia. Nat Commun. (2018) 9:5. 10.1038/s41467-017-02465-5

  • 42.

    LiangMLiZChenTZengJ. Integrative data analysis of multi-platform cancer data with a multimodal deep learning approach. IEEE/ACM Trans Comput Biol Bioinforma. (2015) 12:92837. 10.1109/TCBB.2014.2377729

  • 43.

    LuoZWangWLiFSongyangZFengXXinCet al. Pan-cancer analysis identifies telomerase-associated signatures and cancer subtypes. Mol Cancer. (2019) 18:106. 10.1186/s12943-019-1035-x

  • 44.

    MaTZhangA. Affinity network fusion and semi-supervised learning for cancer patient clustering. Methods. (2018) 145:1624. 10.1016/j.ymeth.2018.05.020

  • 45.

    MarietteJVilla-VialaneixN. Unsupervised multiple kernel learning for heterogeneous data integration. Bioinformatics. (2018) 34:100915. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx682

  • 46.

    MengCKusterBCulhaneACGholamiAM. A multivariate approach to the integration of multi-omics datasets. BMC Bioinformatics. (2014) 15:162. 10.1186/1471-2105-15-162

  • 47.

    MoQShenRGuoCVannucciMChanKSHilsenbeckSG. A fully Bayesian latent variable model for integrative clustering analysis of multi-type omics data. Biostatistics. (2018) 19:7186. 10.1093/biostatistics/kxx017

  • 48.

    NguyenTTagettRDiazDDraghiciS. A novel approach for data integration and disease subtyping. Genome Res. (2017) 27:202539. 10.1101/gr.215129.116

  • 49.

    O'ConnellMJLockEF. R. JIVE for exploration of multi-source molecular data. Bioinformatics. (2016) 32:28779. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btw324

  • 50.

    PaiSHuiSIsserlinRShahMAKakaHBaderGDet al. netDx: interpretable patient classification using integrated patient similarity networks. Mol Syst Biol. (2019) 15:e8497. 10.15252/msb.20188497

  • 51.

    RaphaelBJHrubanRHAguirreAJMoffittRAYehJJStewartCet al. Integrated genomic characterization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Cancer Cell. (2017) 32:185203.e13. 10.1016/j.ccell.2017.07.007

  • 52.

    RappoportNShamirRSchwartzR. NEMO: cancer subtyping by integration of partial multi-omic data. Bioinformatics. (2019) 35:334856. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz058

  • 53.

    RohartFGautierBSinghALê CaoKA. mixOmics: an R package for ‘omics feature selection and multiple data integration. PLoS Comput Biol. (2017) 13:e1005752. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005752

  • 54.

    Sharifi-NoghabiHZolotarevaOCollinsCCEsterM. MOLI: multi-omics late integration with deep neural networks for drug response prediction. Bioinformatics. (2019) 35:i5019. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz318

  • 55.

    SehgalVSeviourEGMossTJMillsGBAzencottRRamPT. Robust selection algorithm (RSA) for multi-omic biomarker discovery; integration with functional network analysis to identify miRNA regulated pathways in multiple cancers. PLoS ONE. (2015) 10:72. 10.1371/journal.pone.0140072

  • 56.

    SongXJiJGleasonKJYangFMartignettiJAChenLSet al. Insights into impact of DNA copy number alteration and methylation on the proteogenomic landscape of human ovarian cancer via a multi-omics integrative analysis. Mol Cell Proteomics. (2019) 18(8 Suppl.1):S5265. 10.1074/mcp.RA118.001220

  • 57.

    SpeicherNKPfeiferN. Integrating different data types by regularized unsupervised multiple kernel learning with application to cancer subtype discovery. Bioinformatics. (2015) 31:i26875. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv244

  • 58.

    VitaliFCohenLDDemartiniAAmatoAEternoVZambelliAet al. A network-based data integration approach to support drug repurposing and multi-Target therapies in triple negative breast cancer. PLoS ONE. (2016) 11:e0162407. 10.1371/journal.pone.0162407

  • 59.

    WooHGChoiJ-HYoonSJeeBAChoEJLeeJ-Het al. Integrative analysis of genomic and epigenomic regulation of the transcriptome in liver cancer. Nat Commun. (2017) 8:839. 10.1038/s41467-017-00991-w

  • 60.

    WuDWangDZhangMQGuJ. Fast dimension reduction and integrative clustering of multi-omics data using lowrank approximation: application to cancer molecular classification. BMC Genomics. (2015) 16:1022. 10.1186/s12864-015-2223-8

  • 61.

    YangZLiuBLinTZhangYZhangLWangMet al. Multiomics analysis on DNA methylation and the expression of both messenger RNA and microRNA in lung adenocarcinoma. J Cell Physiol. (2019) 234:757986. 10.1002/jcp.27520

  • 62.

    YuanLGuoLHYuanCAZhangYHanKNandiAKet al. Integration of multi-omics data for gene regulatory network inference and application to breast cancer. IEEE/ACM Trans Comput Biol Bioinforma. (2019) 16:78291. 10.1109/TCBB.2018.2866836

  • 63.

    WangZWeiYZhangRSuLGogartenSMLiuGet al. Multi-omics analysis reveals a HIF network and hub gene EPAS1 associated with lung adenocarcinoma. EBioMedicine. (2018) 32:93101. 10.1016/j.ebiom.2018.05.024

  • 64.

    ZhangLLvCJinYChengGFuYYuanDet al. Deep learning-based multi-omics data integration reveals two prognostic subtypes in high-risk neuroblastoma. Front Genet. (2018) 9:477. 10.3389/fgene.2018.00477

  • 65.

    ZhouYLiuYLiKZhangRQiuFZhaoNet al. ICan: an integrated co-alteration network to identify ovarian cancer-related genes. PLoS ONE. (2015) 10:e0116095. 10.1371/journal.pone.0116095

  • 66.

    ZhuBSongNShenRAroraAMachielaMJSongLet al. Integrating clinical and multiple omics data for prognostic assessment across human cancers. Sci Rep. (2017) 7:8. 10.1038/s41598-017-17031-8

  • 67.

    ŽitnikMZupanB. Gene network inference by fusing data from diverse distributions. Bioinformatics. (2015) 31:i2309. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv258

  • 68.

    TangBPanZYinKKhateebA. Recent advances of deep learning in bioinformatics and computational biology. Front Genet. (2019) 10:214. 10.3389/fgene.2019.00214

  • 69.

    WangDGuJ. Integrative clustering methods of multi-omics data for molecule-based cancer classifications. Quant Biol. (2016) 4:5867. 10.1007/s40484-016-0063-4

  • 70.

    WuCZhouFRenJLiXJiangYMaSet al. A selective review of multi-level omics data integration using variable selection. High-Throughput. (2019) 8:4. 10.3390/ht8010004

  • 71.

    MostafaviSRayDWarde-FarleyDGrouiosCMorrisQ. GeneMANIA: a real-time multiple association network integration algorithm for predicting gene function. Genome Biol. (2008) 9:S4. 10.1186/gb-2008-9-s1-s4

  • 72.

    ConesaABeckS. Making multi-omics data accessible to researchers. Sci Data. (2019) 6:251. 10.1038/s41597-019-0258-4

  • 73.

    OllierWSprosenTPeakmanT. UK Biobank: from concept to reality. Pharmacogenomics. (2005) 6:63946. 10.2217/14622416.6.6.639

  • 74.

    LiuSHShenPCChenCYHsuANChoYCLaiYLet al. DriverDBv3: a multi-omics database for cancer driver gene research. Nucleic Acids Res. (2020) 48:D86370. 10.1093/nar/gkz964

  • 75.

    VasaikarSVStraubPWangJZhangB. LinkedOmics: analyzing multi-omics data within and across 32 cancer types. Nucleic Acids Res. (2018) 46:D95663. 10.1093/nar/gkx1090

  • 76.

    SathyanarayananAGuptaRThompsonEWNyholtDRBauerDCNagarajSHet al. A comparative study of multi-omics integration tools for cancer driver gene identification and tumour subtyping. Brief Bioinform. (2019). [Epub ahead of print]. 10.1093/bib/bbz121.

  • 77.

    McCabeSDLinDYLoveMI. Consistency and overfitting of multi-omics methods on experimental data. Brief Bioinform. (2019). [Epub ahead of print]. 10.1093/bib/bbz070.

Summary

Keywords

multi-omics, machine learning, tools, systematic review, oncology, cancer

Citation

Nicora G, Vitali F, Dagliati A, Geifman N and Bellazzi R (2020) Integrated Multi-Omics Analyses in Oncology: A Review of Machine Learning Methods and Tools. Front. Oncol. 10:1030. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2020.01030

Received

30 January 2020

Accepted

26 May 2020

Published

30 June 2020

Volume

10 - 2020

Edited by

Francesca Finotello, Innsbruck Medical University, Austria

Reviewed by

Federica Eduati, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands; Giuseppe Jurman, Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Italy

Updates

Copyright

*Correspondence: Riccardo Bellazzi

This article was submitted to Cancer Genetics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Oncology

†These authors have contributed equally to this work

Disclaimer

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Outline

Figures

Cite article

Copy to clipboard


Export citation file


Share article

Article metrics