Biology subjects

Polanco, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Polanco, A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Drug-disease networks and drug repurposing

Repurposing existing drugs to treat new diseases is a cost-effective alternative to de novo drug development, but there are millions of potential drug-disease combinations to be considered with only a small fraction being viable. In silico predictions of drug-disease associations can be invaluable for reducing the size of the search space. In this work we present a novel network of drugs and the diseases they treat, compiled using a combination of existing machine-readable and textual databases, natural-language processing tools, and hand curation, and analyze it using a selection of network-based link prediction methods to identify potential drug-disease combinations. We measure the efficacy of these methods using cross-validation tests and find that several methods, particularly those based on graph embedding and network model fitting, achieve impressive prediction performance, with area under the ROC curve above 0.95 and average precision almost a thousand times better than chance.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

Insights into the evolution of dermal armour: osteoderms in a mammal, the spiny mouse, Acomys.

Osteoderms are bony plates which develop in the dermis of the skin of vertebrates, most commonly found in fishes and reptiles. They have evolved independently at least eight times in reptiles suggesting the presence of a gene regulatory network which is readily activated and inactivated. The absence of osteoderms in birds and mammals, except for the one example of armadillos, has prevented a comparative molecular approach to their evolution. However, following CT scanning, we have discovered that in two genera of Deomyinae, the spiny mouse Acomys and the brush-furred mouse, Lophuromys there are osteoderms present in the skin of their tails. We have studied osteoderm development within the dermis of the tail in Acomys cahirinus to show that they begin development before birth in the proximal part of the tail skin and they do not complete differentiation throughout the tail until 6 weeks after birth. This has allowed us to study the cellular differentiation of the osteoderms with histology and immunocytochemistry and perform RNA sequencing to identify the gene networks involved in their differentiation. There is a widespread down-regulation of keratin genes and an up-regulation of osteoblast genes and a finely balanced expression of signaling pathways as the osteoderms differentiate. Future comparisons with reptilian osteoderms may allow us to understand how these structures have evolved, why they are so rare in mammals and how they are position-specific.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

ADHD: relation between cognitive characteristics and DAT1 / DRD4 dopamine polymorphisms

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a clinical and diagnostic heterogeneous picture. This study analysed the association of functional polymorphisms in DAT1 VNTR 3 UTR and DRD4 VNTR Exon III candidate genes, and the neuropsychological characterisation of attention and executive functions of a group of children with ADHD vs. controls. 32 patients and 51 controls were selected. The DAT1 10-repeat allele appeared more frequently in the two groups (cases: 0.93/control: 0.82), showing an OR: 2.5 (IC 95%: 0.684-9.133; p: 0.158). In DRD4, the 4-repeat allele shows the highest occurrence (cases: 0.62/controls: 0.60). None of the markers presented a significant association after a direct analysis, but the DRD4 7-repeat marker showed a positive risk when performing a Bayesian logistic analysis (coefficient: -1.69; OR: 5.39 CI 95%: 1.167-40.97). On the other hand, when considering association with cognitive performance, a positive risk for processing speed and attention tasks was identified.

neuroscience↗