Interpretable deep learning models for translational medicine

了解细胞信号系统的状态可以深入了解细胞在生理条件下的行为。 和病理条件。细胞信号系统被组织为层次结构（级联）和信号的一个 分子通常在组成上编码以控制细胞过程，例如基因表达。这 该项目旨在开发先进的深度学习模型（DLM），以模拟基于 基因表达数据。在过去的3年里，该项目取得了重大进展，但挑战 保持。重要的是，当代的DLMs表现为“黑匣子”，因为很难解释信号是如何产生的。 以及如何解释隐藏节点在DLM中表示哪个信号。这种黑箱性质 阻止研究人员使用DLMs获得生物学见解，即使这些模型可能非常复杂， 在许多任务中上级其他类型的模型，例如，预测癌症的药物敏感性 细胞在这个竞争性的更新，我们建议开发新的DLMs和创新的推理算法， 训练“可解释的”DLM并将其应用于翻译研究。该研究具有创新性， 在几个方面具有重要意义：1）我们的新型DLM和算法利用大数据 由于细胞信号机制的系统性化学/遗传扰动，因此我们可以使用 将扰动条件作为辅助信息来揭示信号如何在DLM中编码。2)我们整合 因果推理和信息理论的原理与深度学习方法，使DLM可解释。 因此，研究人员可以从这些模型中获得机理的见解。3)创新应用 可解释的DLM将促进翻译研究。例如，我们将训练可解释的DLM来建模 在单细胞水平上的细胞信号传导，并利用这些信息研究细胞间的相互作用 在肿瘤微环境中的细胞之间，以阐明癌症的免疫逃避机制。我们还将 使用来自可解释的DLMs的信息来预测癌细胞药物敏感性。我们预计， 这项研究不仅将在深度学习方法学方面取得重大进展，还将在精准医学方面取得重大进展。

Understanding the state of cellular signaling systems provides insights to how cells behave under physiological and pathological conditions. Cellular signaling systems are organized as hierarchy (cascade) and signals of a molecular is often compositionally encoded to control cellular processes, such as gene expression. This project aims to develop advanced deep learning models (DLMs) to simulate cellular signaling systems based on gene expression data. In last 3 years, the project has made significant progresses, but the challenges remain. Importantly, contemporary DLMs behave as “black boxes”, in that it is difficult to interpret how signals are encoded and how to interpret which signal a hidden node represent in a DLM. This black-box nature prevents researchers from gaining biological insights using DLMs, even though these models can be much superior in modeling data than other types of models in many tasks, e.g., predicting drug sensitivity of cancer cells. In this competitive renewal, we propose to develop novel DLMs and innovative inference algorithms to train “interpretable” DLMs and apply them in translational research. The proposed research is innovative and of high significance in several perspectives: 1) Our novel DLMs and algorithms take advantage of big data resulting from systematic chemical/genetic perturbations of cellular signaling machinery, so that we can use the perturbation condition as side information to reveal how signals are encoded in a DLM. 2) We integrate principles of causal inference and information theory with deep learning method to make DLMs interpretable. As results, that researchers can gain mechanistic insights from such models. 3) Innovative application of interpretable DLMs will advance translational research. For example, we will train interpretable DLMs to model cellular signaling at the level of single cells and use this information investigate inter-cellular interactions among cells in tumor microenvironment to shed light on immune evasion mechanisms of cancers. We will also use information derived from interpretable DLMs to predict cancer cell drug sensitivity. We anticipate that our study will bring forth significant advances not only in deep learning methodology but also in precision medicine.