Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors

Immunotherapy, which treats cancer by either stimulating or suppressing the immune system, has been extraordinarily effective for some cancers, such as breast cancer and B-cell lymphoma. A type of immunotherapy, checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking the ability of cancer cells to evade immune syste...

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Main Author: Ting, Britney A.
Other Authors: Fraenkel, Ernest
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151634
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author Ting, Britney A.
author2 Fraenkel, Ernest
author_facet Fraenkel, Ernest
Ting, Britney A.
author_sort Ting, Britney A.
collection MIT
description Immunotherapy, which treats cancer by either stimulating or suppressing the immune system, has been extraordinarily effective for some cancers, such as breast cancer and B-cell lymphoma. A type of immunotherapy, checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking the ability of cancer cells to evade immune system detection. However, not all patients respond to checkpoint inhibitors, even those with the same tumor types, and the complexity of biological networks and diversity of patients makes it difficult for clinicians to understand why a patient does not respond to treatment. This thesis integrates RNA and whole-exome seqeuencing (WES) data into an interpretable machine learning model and investigates genetic factors that may separate responders from nonresponders. We discovered that both data types contribute to response separation and that certain gene sets may be especially important factors for predicting response. Further analysis to elucidate how much individual genes contribute to significant gene sets and response needs to be performed.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1516342023-08-01T03:43:25Z Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors Ting, Britney A. Fraenkel, Ernest Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Immunotherapy, which treats cancer by either stimulating or suppressing the immune system, has been extraordinarily effective for some cancers, such as breast cancer and B-cell lymphoma. A type of immunotherapy, checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking the ability of cancer cells to evade immune system detection. However, not all patients respond to checkpoint inhibitors, even those with the same tumor types, and the complexity of biological networks and diversity of patients makes it difficult for clinicians to understand why a patient does not respond to treatment. This thesis integrates RNA and whole-exome seqeuencing (WES) data into an interpretable machine learning model and investigates genetic factors that may separate responders from nonresponders. We discovered that both data types contribute to response separation and that certain gene sets may be especially important factors for predicting response. Further analysis to elucidate how much individual genes contribute to significant gene sets and response needs to be performed. M.Eng. 2023-07-31T19:54:38Z 2023-07-31T19:54:38Z 2023-06 2023-06-06T16:34:47.750Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151634 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright retained by author(s) https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Ting, Britney A.
Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title_full Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title_fullStr Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title_full_unstemmed Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title_short Interpretable Modeling of Immunotherapy Response Factors
title_sort interpretable modeling of immunotherapy response factors
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151634
work_keys_str_mv AT tingbritneya interpretablemodelingofimmunotherapyresponsefactors