Personalized cancer-specific networks

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dmitrij Frishman; Professor Dr. Burkhard Rost
• Subject Area: Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology ; General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology ; Structural Biology ; Cell Biology
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 326946590

The key objective of the project is to enable personalized cancer prognosis through a systems medicine approach. Based on the well-established principle that protein structure and, in particular, topology and structure of protein complexes determine the functional capabilities of cells and tissues, we will address a timely and urgent need to link genetic data to molecular and clinical phenotypes that depend on the function of protein complexes in a tissue-specific manner. The project aims at the identification of tissue-specific and tumor-specific computational models, in which patient-specific genetic variation influences protein interactions in ways that affect health. Such models will be initially derived by bioinformatics predictions, and then iteratively refined based on validation data generated by proteomics and genetics experiments. Specifically, predictive techniques developed in the project will be subjected to rigorous experimental verification by generating the corresponding protein complexes and using cross-linking experiments to determine whether and how they differ in topology and structure from the wild type. The models will be validated using samples from a well-annotated cohort of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. The project proposes to generate several important data resources, analysis methods, software tools and services: 1) Methods for predicting disease mutations affecting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between both globular and transmembrane proteins, leading to loss or gain of function; 2) Curated datasets of tissue- and tumor-specific interaction networks impacted by sequence variants; 3) Methods for creating interaction networks that take into account isoforms as well as dynamic and concentration-dependent aspects of PPIs; 4) Methods and software tools to detect structural and compositional alterations in protein complexes induced by genomic lesions; 5) Curated protein complexes and cancer specific networks relevant for tumor-immune cell interactions in solid cancers; 6) Experimental validation by chemical cross-linking and mass spectrometry of predicted structural or compositional alterations induced by genomic variation in a set of protein complexes; 7) Primary data and results from the immunogenomic analyses from the TNBC cohort used for validation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF); Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Rudolf Aebersold; Professor Dr. Zlatko Trajanoski