ASGARD

ASGARD identifies candidate drugs for repurposing from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data to support personalized treatment strategies by accounting for cellular heterogeneity.

Key Features:

• Single-Cell Resolution Analysis: Utilizes single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to quantify intercellular heterogeneity and capture diverse cell clusters within patient samples.
• Drug Repurposing Pipeline: Implements the Single-cell Guided Pipeline to Aid Repurposing of Drugs (ASGARD) that assigns a quantitative "drug score" to drugs based on their interactions with cell clusters.
• Improved Accuracy: Reports higher average accuracy for single-drug therapy prediction compared with bulk-cell–based methods and outperforms other cell cluster-level prediction approaches.
• Validation with Clinical Data: Validated using the TRANSACT drug response prediction method on Triple-Negative-Breast-Cancer (TNBC) patient samples and identified top-ranked drugs that are FDA-approved or in clinical trials.
• Personalized Medicine Application: Enables selection of personalized single drugs or drug combinations by integrating the unique cellular composition of each patient sample.

Scientific Applications:

• Precision Oncology: Inform treatment planning in cancer by resolving tumor heterogeneity at the single-cell level.
• Drug Discovery and Development: Support drug repurposing efforts by ranking existing compounds for new therapeutic indications.
• Personalized Treatment Strategies: Guide individualized treatment regimens by prioritizing drugs or combinations tailored to a patient's cellular profile.

Methodology:

Processes single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data; computes quantitative drug scores using an algorithm based on drug–cell-cluster interactions; generates ranked lists of candidate drugs or drug combinations; and was validated using the TRANSACT drug response prediction method on TNBC patient samples.