Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.10.27.356717v1?rss=1 Authors: Liany, H., Jeyasekharan, A., Rajan, V. Abstract: A Synthetic Lethal (SL) interaction is a functional relationship between two genes or functional entities where the loss of either entity is viable but the loss of both is lethal. Such pairs can be used to develop targeted anticancer therapies with fewer side effects and reduced overtreatment. However, finding clinically actionable SL interactions remains challenging. Leveraging large-scale unified gene expression data of both disease-free and cancerous data, we design a new technique, based on statistical hypothesis testing, called ASTER (Analysis of Synthetic lethality by comparison with Tissue-specific disease-free gEnomic and tRanscriptomic data) to identify SL pairs. For large-scale multiple hypothesis testing, we develop an extension called ASTER++ that can utilize additional input gene features within the hypothesis testing framework. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of ASTER in accurately identifying SL pairs that are therapeutically actionable in stomach and breast cancers. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info