Computational biology approaches in drug repurposing and gene essentiality screening

Abstract

The rapid innovations in biotechnology have led to an exponential growth of data and electronically accessible scientific literature. In this enormous scientific data, knowledge can be exploited, and novel discoveries can be made. In my dissertation, I have focused on the novel molecular mechanism and therapeutic discoveries from big data for complex diseases. It is very evident today that complex diseases have many factors including genetics and environmental effects. The discovery of these factors is challenging and critical in personalized medicine. The increasing cost and time to develop new drugs poses a new challenge in effectively treating complex diseases. In this dissertation, we want to demonstrate that the use of existing data and literature as a potential resource for discovering novel therapies and in repositioning existing drugs. The key to identifying novel knowledge is in integrating information from decades of research across the different scientific disciplines to uncover interactions that are not explicitly stated. This puts critical information at the fingertips of researchers and clinicians who can take advantage of this newly acquired knowledge to make informed decisions. This dissertation utilizes computational biology methods to identify and integrate existing scientific data and literature resources in the discovery of novel molecular targets and drugs that can be repurposed. In chapters 1 of my dissertation, I extensively sifted through scientific literature and identified a novel interaction between Vitamin A and CYP19A1 that could lead to a potential increase in the production of estrogens. Further in chapter 2 by exploring a microarray dataset from an estradiol gene sensitivity study I was able to identify a potential novel anti-estrogenic indication for the commonly used urinary analgesic, phenazopyridine. Both discoveries were experimentally validated in the laboratory. In chapter 3 of my dissertation, through the use of a manually curated corpus and machine learning algorithms, I identified and extracted genes that are essential for cell survival. These results brighten the reality that novel knowledge with potential clinical applications can be discovered from existing data and literature by integrating information across various scientific disciplines.