Autoencoder/RandomForest-TabPFN for cross-cancer metabolomics: prostate and breast cancer diagnosis using paper spray...

Accurate and rapid disease diagnosis, particularly in prostate cancer (PC) and breast cancer (BC), is critical for early intervention and improved patient outcomes. Metabolomic signatures represent a robust molecular framework for elucidating cancer-associated biochemical reprogramming. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in biology in recent years has become widespread and promising. This study introduces a novel predictive method that integrates an Autoencoder, random forest-based feature selection and Tabular Prior-data Fitted Network (TabPFN) to achieve high diagnostic accuracy from metabolomics data of prostate and BC patients. The datasets were acquired using paper spray ionization mass spectrometry and flow injection-traveling-wave ion mobility-mass spectrometry of individuals diagnosed with PC and BC. When leveraging metabolomic profiling data from two distinct sources, PC urine and serum samples, the proposed model achieved an accuracy up to 98.75% in distinguishing diseased from healthy conditions. Additionally, we employed a BC dataset containing metabolic and lipidomic signatures acquired from core needle biopsies using a miniature MS platform coupled with PSI to assess the fidelity of our implementation across distinct cancer types. Our results on a well-characterized targeted dataset show that we can effectively reduce high-dimensional data into latent feature representations. At the same time, TabPFN captures tumor progression-related changes and feature interaction, thereby enhancing the possibility that the model will be a highly potent and effective tool for stage-specific diagnostic precision. Most existing machine learning approaches for disease diagnosis primarily rely on imaging, genomics, or clinical parameters, often overlooking the critical role of metabolites in identifying disease-specific biochemical signatures. By integrating metabolite-specific data with a robust deep-learning approach, this study demonstrates the transformative potential of AI in metabolomics-based diagnostics. The proposed model offers scalability and versatility, with applications extending beyond oncology to a much broader disease profiling aspect. These findings emphasize the value of combining multi-source metabolomic data with deep learning to advance personalized medicine and enhance diagnostic efficiency in clinical practice.