title: Identifying novel associations between small molecules and miRNAs based on integrated molecular networks.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  miRNAs play crucial roles in human diseases and newly discovered could be targeted by small molecule (SM) drug compounds. Thus, the identification of small molecule drug compounds (SM) that target dysregulated miRNAs in cancers will provide new insight into cancer biology and accelerate drug discovery for cancer therapy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In this study, we aimed to develop a novel computational method to comprehensively identify associations between SMs and miRNAs. To this end, exploiting multiple molecular interaction databases, we first established an integrated SM-miRNA association network based on 690 561 SM to SM interactions, 291 600 miRNA to miRNA associations, as well as 664 known SM to miRNA targeting pairs. Then, by performing Random Walk with Restart algorithm on the integrated network, we prioritized the miRNAs associated to each of the SMs. By validating our results utilizing an independent dataset we obtained an area under the ROC curve greater than 0.7. Furthermore, comparisons indicated our integrated approach significantly improved the identification performance of those simple modeled methods. This computational framework as well as the prioritized SM-miRNA targeting relationships will promote the further developments of targeted cancer therapies.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  yxli@sibs.ac.cn, lixia@hrbmu.edu.cn or jiangwei@hrbmu.edu.cn
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Yingli
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lv
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Shuyuan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Fanlin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Zhifeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Xiaowen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and Bioinformatics Center, Key Lab of Systems Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Yixue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China and.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019540:Area Under Curve; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries