• Multi drug treatments are increasingly used in the clinic to combat complex and co-occurring diseases. However, most drug combination discovery efforts today are mainly focused on anticancer therapy and rarely examine the potential of using more than two drugs simultaneously. Moreover, there is currently no reported methodology for performing second- and higher-order drug combination analysis of secretomic patterns, meaning protein concentration profiles released by the cells.Here, we introduce COMBSecretomics (https://github.com/EffieChantzi/COMBSecretomics.git), the first pragmatic methodological framework designed to search exhaustively for second- and higher-order mixtures of candidate treatments that can modify, or even reverse malfunctioning secretomic patterns of human cells. This framework comes with two novel model-free combination analysis methods; a tailor-made generalization of the highest single agent principle and a data mining approach based on top-down hierarchical clustering. Quality control procedures to eliminate outliers and non-parametric statistics to quantify uncertainty in the results obtained are also included. COMBSecretomics is based on a standardized reproducible format and could be employed with any experimental platform that provides the required protein release data. Its practical use and functionality are demonstrated by means of a proof-of-principle pharmacological study related to cartilage degradation.COMBSecretomics is the first methodological framework reported to enable secretome-related second- and higher-order drug combination analysis. It could be used in drug discovery and development projects, clinical practice, as well as basic biological understanding of the largely unexplored changes in cell-cell communication that occurs due to disease and/or associated pharmacological treatment conditions.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinsk bioteknologi -- Medicinsk bioteknologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Medical Biotechnology -- Medical Biotechnology (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinsk bioteknologi -- Biomedicinsk laboratorievetenskap/teknologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Medical Biotechnology -- Biomedical Laboratory Science/Technology (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

multi-input multi-output cell-cell communication

secretomics

higher-order drug combination analysis

top-down hierarchical clustering

generalized highest single agent

resampling

Bioinformatik

Bioinformatics

Farmakologi

Pharmacology

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)