Zhihui Luo

Mr. Zhihui Luo


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

9Years (2018-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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23 March 2018 in Molecules
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
YQYuan Quan
Yuan Quan
MLMeng-Yuan Liu
Meng-Yuan Liu
YLYe-mao Liu
Ye-mao Liu
LZLida Zhu
Lida Zhu
YWYu-Shan Wu
Yu-Shan Wu
Hong-yu ZhangHong-yu Zhang
Hong-yu Zhang
Due to synergistic effects, combinatorial drugs are widely used for treating complex diseases. However, combining drugs and making them synergetic remains a challenge. Genetic disease genes are considered a promising source of drug targets with important implications for navigating the drug space. Most diseases are not caused by a single pathogenic factor, but by multiple disease genes, in particular, interacting disease genes. Thus, it is reasonable to consider that targeting epistatic disease genes may enhance the therapeutic effects of combinatorial drugs. In this study, synthetic lethality gene pairs of tumors, similar to epistatic disease genes, were first targeted by combinatorial drugs, resulting in the enrichment of the combinatorial drugs with cancer treatment, which verified our hypothesis. Then, conventional epistasis detection software was used to identify epistatic disease genes from the genome wide association studies (GWAS) dataset. Furthermore, combinatorial drugs were predicted by targeting these epistatic disease genes, and five combinations were proven to have synergistic anti-cancer effects on MCF-7 cells through cell cytotoxicity assay. Combined with the three-dimensional (3D) genome-based method, the epistatic disease genes were filtered and were more closely related to disease. By targeting the filtered gene pairs, the efficiency of combinatorial drug discovery has been further improved.