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A comparative study of survival models for breast cancer prognostication revisited: the benefits of multi-gene models.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:The development of clinical -omic biomarkers for predicting patient prognosis has mostly focused on multi-gene models. However, several studies have described significant weaknesses of multi-gene biomarkers. Indeed, some high-profile reports have even indicated that multi-gene biomarkers fail to consistently outperform simple single-gene ones. Given the continual improvements in -omics technologies and the availability of larger, better-powered datasets, we revisited this "single-gene hypothesis" using new techniques and datasets. RESULTS:By deeply sampling the population of available gene sets, we compare the intrinsic properties of single-gene biomarkers to multi-gene biomarkers in twelve different partitions of a large breast cancer meta-dataset. We show that simple multi-gene models consistently outperformed single-gene biomarkers in all twelve partitions. We found 270 multi-gene biomarkers (one per ~11,111 sampled) that always made better predictions than the best single-gene model. CONCLUSIONS:The single-gene hypothesis for breast cancer does not appear to retain its validity in the face of improved statistical models, lower-noise genomic technology and better-powered patient cohorts. These results highlight that it is critical to revisit older hypotheses in the light of newer techniques and datasets.

SUBMITTER: Grzadkowski MR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6215649 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A comparative study of survival models for breast cancer prognostication revisited: the benefits of multi-gene models.

Grzadkowski Michal R MR Sendorek Dorota H DH P'ng Christine C Huang Vincent V Boutros Paul C PC

BMC bioinformatics 20181103 1

<h4>Background</h4>The development of clinical -omic biomarkers for predicting patient prognosis has mostly focused on multi-gene models. However, several studies have described significant weaknesses of multi-gene biomarkers. Indeed, some high-profile reports have even indicated that multi-gene biomarkers fail to consistently outperform simple single-gene ones. Given the continual improvements in -omics technologies and the availability of larger, better-powered datasets, we revisited this "sin ...[more]

PMID: 30390622

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A comparative study of survival models for breast cancer prognostication revisited: the benefits of multi-gene models.

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A comparative study of survival models for breast cancer prognostication revisited: the benefits of multi-gene models.

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