HPO-Shuffle: an associated gene prioritization strategy and its application in drug repurposing for the treatment of canine epilepsy

Biosci Rep. 2019 Sep 6;39(9):BSR20191247. doi: 10.1042/BSR20191247. Print 2019 Sep 30.

Abstract

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder that affects mammalian species including human beings and dogs. In order to discover novel drugs for the treatment of canine epilepsy, multiomics data were analyzed to identify epilepsy associated genes. In this research, the original ranking of associated genes was obtained by two high-throughput bioinformatics experiments: Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) and microarray analysis. The association ranking of genes was enhanced by a re-ranking system, HPO-Shuffle, which integrated information from GWAS, microarray analysis and Human Phenotype Ontology database for further downstream analysis. After applying HPO-Shuffle, the association ranking of epilepsy genes were improved. Afterward, a weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) led to a set of gene modules, which hinted a clear relevance between the high ranked genes and the target disease. Finally, WGCNA and connectivity map (CMap) analysis were performed on the integrated dataset to discover a potential drug list, in which a well-known anticonvulsant phensuximide was included.

Keywords: Canine Epilepsy; Drug Repurposing; Human Phenotype Ontology; Omics Data; Re-ranking.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Anticonvulsants / therapeutic use*
  • Computational Biology
  • Dog Diseases / drug therapy
  • Dog Diseases / genetics*
  • Dogs
  • Drug Repositioning
  • Epilepsy / drug therapy
  • Epilepsy / genetics*
  • Epilepsy / veterinary
  • Gene Regulatory Networks / genetics
  • Genome-Wide Association Study*
  • Humans
  • Microarray Analysis

Substances

  • Anticonvulsants