Swarm Intelligence-Enhanced Detection of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Using Tumor-Educated Platelets
Myron G Best1, Nik Sol2, Sjors G J G In 't Veld3
1Department of Neurosurgery, VU University Medical Center, Cancer Center Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Department of Pathology, VU University Medical Center, Cancer Center Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Brain Tumor Center Amsterdam, VU University Medical Center, Cancer Center Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
Blood-based liquid biopsies, including tumor-educated blood platelets (TEPs), have emerged as promising biomarker sources for non-invasive detection of cancer. Here we demonstrate that particle-swarm optimization (PSO)-enhanced algorithms enable efficient selection of RNA biomarker panels from platelet RNA-sequencing libraries (n = 779). This resulted in accurate TEP-based detection of early- and late-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (n = 518 late-stage validation cohort, accuracy, 88%; AUC, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.92-0.96; p < 0.001; n = 106 early-stage validation cohort, accuracy, 81%; AUC, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.83-0.95; p < 0.001), independent of age of the individuals, smoking habits, whole-blood storage time, and various inflammatory conditions. PSO enabled selection of gene panels to diagnose cancer from TEPs, suggesting that swarm intelligence may also benefit the optimization of diagnostics readout of other liquid biopsy biosources.
