Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions

We contribute in saving the lives of cancer patients through early detection and diagnosis, since one of the major challenges in cancer treatment is that patients are diagnosed at very late stages when appropriate medical interventions become less effective and full curative treatment is no longer a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Khorshed, Tarek
Format: Thesis
Published: AUC Knowledge Fountain 2021
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613418445340672
access_status_str Open Access
author Khorshed, Tarek
author_browse Khorshed, Tarek
author_facet Khorshed, Tarek
author_sort Khorshed, Tarek
collection Thesis
description We contribute in saving the lives of cancer patients through early detection and diagnosis, since one of the major challenges in cancer treatment is that patients are diagnosed at very late stages when appropriate medical interventions become less effective and full curative treatment is no longer achievable. Cancer classification using gene expressions is extremely challenging given the complexity and high dimensionality of the data. Current classification methods typically rely on samples collected from a single tissue type and perform a prerequisite of gene feature selection to avoid processing the full set of genes. These methods fall short in taking advantage of genome-wide next generation sequencing technologies which provide a snapshot of the whole transcriptome rather than a predetermined subset of genes. We propose a Deep Learning framework for cancer diagnosis by developing a multi-tissue cancer classifier based on whole-transcriptome gene expressions collected from multiple tumor types covering multiple organ sites. We introduce a new Convolutional Neural Network architecture called Gene eXpression Network (GeneXNet), which is specifically designed to address the complex nature of gene expressions. Our proposed GeneXNet provides capabilities of detecting genetic alterations driving cancer progression by learning genomic signatures across multiple tissue types without requiring the prerequisite of gene feature selection. We design an end-to-end Deep Reinforcement Learning framework that automatically learns the optimal network architecture together with the associated optimal hyperparameters that maximizes the performance of our multi-tissue cancer classifier. Our framework eliminates the manual process of handcrafting the design of deep network architectures and the manual process of hyperparameter optimization on the target dataset. Our model achieves 98.9% classification accuracy on human samples representing 33 different cancer tumor types across 26 organ sites. We demonstrate how our model can be used for transfer learning to build classifiers for tumors lacking sufficient samples to be trained independently. We contribute in providing medical professionals with more confidence in using Deep Learning for medical diagnosis by introducing visualization procedures to provide biological insight on how our network is performing classification across multiple tumors. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to develop a multi-tissue cancer classifier based on a full set of whole-transcriptome gene expressions collected from tumors across different tissue types without requiring a prerequisite process of gene feature selection.
format Thesis
id oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-2450
institution American University in Cairo (Egypt)
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:35:48.888Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
publishDate 2021
publishDateRange 2021
publishDateSort 2021
publisher AUC Knowledge Fountain
publisherStr AUC Knowledge Fountain
record_format dspace
source_str AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
spelling oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-2450 Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions Khorshed, Tarek We contribute in saving the lives of cancer patients through early detection and diagnosis, since one of the major challenges in cancer treatment is that patients are diagnosed at very late stages when appropriate medical interventions become less effective and full curative treatment is no longer achievable. Cancer classification using gene expressions is extremely challenging given the complexity and high dimensionality of the data. Current classification methods typically rely on samples collected from a single tissue type and perform a prerequisite of gene feature selection to avoid processing the full set of genes. These methods fall short in taking advantage of genome-wide next generation sequencing technologies which provide a snapshot of the whole transcriptome rather than a predetermined subset of genes. We propose a Deep Learning framework for cancer diagnosis by developing a multi-tissue cancer classifier based on whole-transcriptome gene expressions collected from multiple tumor types covering multiple organ sites. We introduce a new Convolutional Neural Network architecture called Gene eXpression Network (GeneXNet), which is specifically designed to address the complex nature of gene expressions. Our proposed GeneXNet provides capabilities of detecting genetic alterations driving cancer progression by learning genomic signatures across multiple tissue types without requiring the prerequisite of gene feature selection. We design an end-to-end Deep Reinforcement Learning framework that automatically learns the optimal network architecture together with the associated optimal hyperparameters that maximizes the performance of our multi-tissue cancer classifier. Our framework eliminates the manual process of handcrafting the design of deep network architectures and the manual process of hyperparameter optimization on the target dataset. Our model achieves 98.9% classification accuracy on human samples representing 33 different cancer tumor types across 26 organ sites. We demonstrate how our model can be used for transfer learning to build classifiers for tumors lacking sufficient samples to be trained independently. We contribute in providing medical professionals with more confidence in using Deep Learning for medical diagnosis by introducing visualization procedures to provide biological insight on how our network is performing classification across multiple tumors. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to develop a multi-tissue cancer classifier based on a full set of whole-transcriptome gene expressions collected from tumors across different tissue types without requiring a prerequisite process of gene feature selection. 2021-01-31T08:00:00Z dissertation application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1493 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/2450/viewcontent/tarek_khorshed_dissertation_updated.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain Cancer classification Convolutional Neural Networks Deep learning Gene expressions Next Generation Sequencing RNA Sequencing Reinforcement Learning Transfer Learning Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Bioinformatics Computer Sciences Data Science Genomics
spellingShingle Cancer classification
Convolutional Neural Networks
Deep learning
Gene expressions
Next Generation Sequencing
RNA Sequencing
Reinforcement Learning
Transfer Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Bioinformatics
Computer Sciences
Data Science
Genomics
Khorshed, Tarek
Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title_full Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title_fullStr Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title_full_unstemmed Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title_short Deep Learning for Multi-Tissue Cancer Classification of Gene Expressions
title_sort deep learning for multi tissue cancer classification of gene expressions
topic Cancer classification
Convolutional Neural Networks
Deep learning
Gene expressions
Next Generation Sequencing
RNA Sequencing
Reinforcement Learning
Transfer Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Bioinformatics
Computer Sciences
Data Science
Genomics
url https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1493
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/2450/viewcontent/tarek_khorshed_dissertation_updated.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT khorshedtarek deeplearningformultitissuecancerclassificationofgeneexpressions