Unveiling Hidden Connections in Omics DataviapyPARAGON: an Integrative Hybrid Approach for Disease Network Construction

Abstract Omics technologies are powerful tools for detecting dysregulated and altered signaling components in various contexts, encompassing disease states, patients, and drug-perturbations. Network inference or reconstruction algorithms play an integral role in the successful analysis and identification of causal relationships between omics hits. However, accurate representation of signaling networks and identification of context-specific interactions within sparse omics datasets in complex interactomes pose significant challenges in integrative approaches. To address these challenges, we present pyPARAGON (PAgeRAnk-flux on Graphlet-guided network for multi-Omic data integratioN), a novel tool that combines network propagation with graphlets. By leveraging network motifs instead of pairwise connections among proteins, pyPARAGON offers improved accuracy and reduces the inclusion of nonspecific interactions in signaling networks. Through comprehensive evaluations on benchmark cancer signaling pathways, we demonstrate that pyPARAGON outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in node propagation and edge inference. Furthermore, pyPARAGON exhibits promising performance in discovering cancer driver networks. Notably, we demonstrate its utility in network-based stratification of patient tumors by integrating phosphoproteomic data from 105 breast cancer tumors with the interactome, leading to the discovery of tumor-specific signaling pathways. Overall, the development and evaluation of pyPARAGON significantly contributes to the field as an effective tool for the analysis and integration of multi-omic data in the context of signaling networks. pyPARAGON is available at https://github.com/metunetlab/pyPARAGON .