MIRROR: miRNA regulation-level differential network to study sex and ethnic disparities in cancer

Abstract

Cancer disparities are adverse differences in cancer measures that exist among certain population groups. Given that the role they play not only in the disease prognosis but also in therapy response, there is an urgent need to understand what causes them. Most studies investigate these disparities by analyzing transcriptomic data and in particular miRNAs for their regulatory role, but only focusing on expression levels. To face this challenge we propose MIRROR, a new method which analyzes a differential co-expression network of miRNAs between patients' cohorts, to study the role they play at the target genes' level. Doing so, we can study the altered molecular mechanism that are linked to cancer disparities. The application of MIRROR to two different cases of cancer disparities has demonstrated its efficacy in identifying molecular players involved in the considered disparity, presenting itself as a viable option to approach this challenge.