RETRACTED: Optimizing chemotherapeutic targets in non-small cell lung cancer with transfer learning for precision

Varun Malik1, Ruchi Mittal1, Deepali Gupta1

  • 1Chitkara University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chitkara University, Rajpura, Punjab, India.

Plos One
|April 29, 2025
PubMed

Insights

This study introduces a new machine learning model for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) drug discovery. The MRO+DTransL model significantly improves accuracy in identifying therapeutic targets, enhancing patient survival outcomes.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Computational Biology
  • Drug Discovery

Background:

  • Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, with survival prediction remaining a challenge.
  • Developing effective NSCLC therapies is complex due to side effects, drug resistance, and varied patient responses.
  • Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) offer promising avenues for advancing NSCLC drug discovery and personalized treatments.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop an advanced drug discovery model for identifying therapeutic targets in NSCLC.
  • To enhance the accuracy of predicting therapeutic targets for improved NSCLC patient survival outcomes.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a hybrid UNet transformer for deep feature extraction from drug and protein sequences.
  • Employed the modified Rime optimization (MRO) algorithm for feature selection and dimensionality reduction.
  • Developed a deep transfer learning (DTransL) model to boost drug discovery accuracy for NSCLC.

Main Results:

  • The proposed MRO+DTransL model demonstrated superior performance compared to existing state-of-the-art models on benchmark datasets (Davis, KIBA, Binding-DB).
  • Achieved high accuracy rates: 98.398% on Davis, 98.264% on KIBA, and 97.344% on Binding-DB.
  • Showcased significant performance improvements over baseline models, including a 9.742% increase over LSTM on the Davis dataset.

Conclusions:

  • The MRO+DTransL model represents a significant advancement in ML/DL for NSCLC drug discovery.
  • This approach holds potential for identifying effective therapeutic targets, thereby improving survival outcomes for NSCLC patients.
  • The model's high accuracy and performance improvements suggest its utility in personalized medicine for NSCLC treatment.