iCEMIGE: Integration of CEll-morphometrics, MIcrobiome, and GEne biomarker signatures for risk stratification in breast cancers

The development of precision medicine is essential for personalized treatment and improved clinical outcome, whereas biomarkers are critical for the success of precision therapies.

To investigate whether iCEMIGE (integration of CEll-morphometrics, MIcro biome, and GEne biomarker signatures) improves risk stratification of breast cancer (BC) patients.

We used our recently developed machine learning technique to identify cellular morphometric biomarkers (CMBs) from the whole histological slide images in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) breast cancer (TCGA-BRCA) cohort. Multivariate Cox regression was used to assess whether cell-morphometrics prognosis score (CMPS) and our previously reported 12-gene expression prognosis score (GEPS) and 15-microbe abundance prognosis score (MAPS) were independent prognostic factors. iCEMIGE was built upon the sparse representation learning technique. The iCEMIGE scoring model performance was measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve compared to CMPS, GEPS, or MAPS alone. Nomogram models were created to predict overall survival (OS) and progress-free survival (PFS) rates at 5- and 10-year in the TCGA-BRCA cohort.

We identified 39 CMBs that were used to create a CMPS system in BCs. CMPS, GEPS, and MAPS were found to be significantly independently associated with OS. We then established an iCEMIGE scoring system for risk stratification of BC patients. The iGEMIGE score has a significant prognostic value for OS and PFS independent of clinical factors (age, stage, and estrogen and progesterone receptor status) and PAM50-based molecular subtype. Importantly, the iCEMIGE score significantly increased the power to predict OS and PFS compared to CMPS, GEPS, or MAPS alone.

Our study demonstrates a novel and generic artificial intelligence framework for multimodal data integration toward improving prognosis risk stratification of BC patients, which can be extended to other types of cancer.