Selection of causal gene sets for lymphoma prognostication from expression profiling and construction of prognostic fuzzy neural network models

To assess the response of lymphomas to chemotherapy, gene expression profiling data from DNA microarrays were analyzed using the fuzzy neural network (FNN) modeling method. We used the FNN modeling method to produce 10 noninferior models. Using these models, we were able to predict diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patient outcome with 93% accuracy. Of the 37 genes in the 10 models, 13 genes were repeatedly selected, indicating that these genes are important for prognostication. On Kaplan-Meier plots of overall survival, patients predicted by the FNN model to be cured survived significantly longer than those predicted to be refractory (P<0.0001), indicating that the FNN could successfully identify patients with a relatively poor prognosis among low-clinical-risk patients. The FNN modeling method presented here is able to precisely extract significant biological markers affecting prognosis.