Gene context drift identifies drug targets to mitigate cancer treatment resistance.
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| Abstract | Cancer treatment often fails because combinations of different therapies evoke complex resistance mechanisms that are hard to predict. We introduce REsistance through COntext DRift (RECODR): a computational pipeline that combines co-expression graph networks of single-cell RNA sequencing profiles with a graph-embedding approach to measure changes in gene co-expression context during cancer treatment. RECODR is based on the idea that gene co-expression context, rather than expression level alone, reveals important information about treatment resistance. Analysis of tumors treated in preclinical and clinical trials using RECODR unmasked resistance mechanisms -invisible to existing computational approaches- enabling the design of highly effective combination treatments for mice with choroid plexus carcinoma, and the prediction of potential new treatments for patients with medulloblastoma and triple-negative breast cancer. Thus, RECODR may unravel the complexity of cancer treatment resistance by detecting context-specific changes in gene interactions that determine the resistant phenotype. |
| Year of Publication | 2025
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| Journal | Cancer cell
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| Volume | 43
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| Issue | 9
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| Pages | 1608-1621.e9
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| Date Published | 09/2025
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| ISSN | 1878-3686
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| DOI | 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.06.005
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| PubMed ID | 40578362
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