Deep Learning Predicts Underlying Features on Pathology Images with Therapeutic Relevance for Breast and Gastric Cancer

• Published in: Cancers Vol. 12; no. 12; p. 3687
• Main Authors: Valieris, Renan, Amaro, Lucas, Osório, Cynthia Aparecida Bueno de Toledo, Bueno, Adriana Passos, Rosales Mitrowsky, Rafael Andres, Carraro, Dirce Maria, Nunes, Diana Noronha, Dias-Neto, Emmanuel, Silva, Israel Tojal da
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 09.12.2020; MDPI
• Subjects: Algorithms; Biomarkers; Breast cancer; Carcinogenesis; DNA repair; Gastric cancer; Homologous recombination; Learning algorithms; Machine learning; Mismatch repair; Mutation; Ovarian cancer; Tumors; deep learning; biomarker; digital pathology; DNA repair deficiency; mutational signature
• ISSN: 2072-6694; 2072-6694
• DOI: 10.3390/cancers12123687

DNA repair deficiency (DRD) is an important driver of carcinogenesis and an efficient target for anti-tumor therapies to improve patient survival. Thus, detection of DRD in tumors is paramount. Currently, determination of DRD in tumors is dependent on wet-lab assays. Here we describe an efficient machine learning algorithm which can predict DRD from histopathological images. The utility of this algorithm is demonstrated with data obtained from 1445 cancer patients. Our method performs rather well when trained on breast cancer specimens with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD), AUC (area under curve) = 0.80. Results for an independent breast cancer cohort achieved an AUC = 0.70. The utility of our method was further shown by considering the detection of mismatch repair deficiency (MMRD) in gastric cancer, yielding an AUC = 0.81. Our results demonstrate the capacity of our learning-base system as a low-cost tool for DRD detection.