Washington University School of Medicine

Division of Biostatistics
Seminar Series Fall 2007

Regularization Approach to Screening and Selection of Biomarkers

Yoonkyung Lee
Department of Statistics
Ohio State University

Friday, November 30, 2007, 12:30–1:30 pm

GEMS classroom, 3rd Floor in Shriner's Building
Coffee, tea, and cookies will be provided


Abstract

In medical studies involving such genomic data as gene expression levels and SNPs, a large number of potential biomarkers are available for prognosis or diagnosis of a disease. Finding a subset of relevant biomarkers is important for understanding of the disease and construction of effective prognostic or diagnostic rules. The method of regularization in the form of convex optimization is considered as a computationally viable alternative to the combinatorial search of the relevant biomarkers. In this talk, we present a fast and efficient linear programming algorithm for tracking the path of varying subsets of biomarkers in the regularization framework. It allows a complete exploration of the vast space of composite biomarkers and facilitates screening and selection. The algorithm will be illustrated with numerical examples.