An extension of Drugst.One for expert curation and refinement of disease modules

Understanding diseases is difficult due to a lack of insight into the underlying biological mechanisms, resulting in imprecise treatments based solely on symptoms. Disease modules offer distinct perspectives on complex diseases and establish a basis for mechanistic drug repurposing. However, disease module inference does not pay attention to pathway annotations. Since drug repurposing aims to hint at biological pathways, this information is crucial and should be considered when exploring the underlying mechanisms within protein-protein interaction networks.

Drugst.One, a versatile web tool for disease module visualization and drug repurposing, does not offer pathway enrichment and visualization. To enable deeper analyses of these modules, we extended existing functionality in Drugst.One with functionality for investigating enriched pathways. Our extension for Drugst.Onesupports genesets from KEGG, Reactome, and WikiPathways. Further, we offer network clustering methods to detect communities.

This advancement contrasts previous methods by providing a user-friendly approach for comprehensive pathway analysis and module refinement within the Drugst.One framework suited for expert curation. Contributing to the broader context of computational drug repurposing and disease module interpretation, this extension offers a streamlined approach for assessing pathway involvement and functional refinement within disease modules.