Recovering Drug-Induced Apoptosis Subnetwork from Connectivity Map Data

The Connectivity Map (CMAP) project profiled human cancer cell lines exposed to a library of anticancer compounds with the goal of connecting cancer with underlying genes and potential treatments. Since the therapeutic goal of most anticancer drugs is to induce tumor-selective apoptosis, it is critical to understand the specific cell death pathways triggered by drugs. This can help to better understand the mechanism of how cancer cells respond to chemical stimulations and improve the treatment of human tumors. In this study, using CMAP microarray data from breast cancer cell line MCF7, we applied a Gaussian Bayesian network modeling approach and identified apoptosis as a major drug-induced cellular-pathway. We then focused on 13 apoptotic genes that showed significant differential expression across all drug-perturbed samples to reconstruct the apoptosis network. In our predicted subnetwork, 9 out of 15 high-confidence interactions were validated in the literature, and our inferred network captured two major cell death pathways by identifying BCL2L11 and PMAIP1 as key interacting players for the intrinsic apoptosis pathway and TAXBP1 and TNFAIP3 for the extrinsic apoptosis pathway. Our inferred apoptosis network also suggested the role of BCL2L11 and TNFAIP3 as "gateway" genes in the drug-induced intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis pathways.