An investigative network analysis mapping global cancer epidemiology

Cancer incidence is influenced by a combination of extrinsic and genetic factors. We hypothesized that cancers with similar incidence patterns may suggest shared etiologies. Age-standardized incidence rates for 36 cancer types across 185 countries were obtained from GLOBOCAN 2022. Pairwise Spearman's correlation coefficients were computed, and network clustering analyses were performed using six community detection algorithms: Leiden, Surprise, Walktrap, Girvan-Newman, Infomap, and spectral clustering. A dominant cluster was consistently identified, comprising kidney, pancreatic, colorectal, and thyroid cancers, as well as hematological malignancies. The second cluster comprised lung cancer, mesothelioma, melanoma, and non-melanoma skin cancer, which were grouped with head and neck cancers in some algorithms. Kaposi's sarcoma, nasopharyngeal cancer, and salivary gland cancer were classified individually. The dominant cluster showed significantly greater enrichment of shared mutational signatures (cosine similarity, p = 0.041) and recurrent mutation overlap (Jaccard similarity, p = 0.025) than expected by chance. Additionally, eigenvector centrality positively correlated with global cancer incidence rates. Overall, this unsupervised network analysis of global cancer epidemiology identifies biologically coherent clusters that reflect potentially shared etiological mechanisms and may inform public health intervention strategies.