Diagnostic Evidence GAuge of Single cells (DEGAS): a flexible deep transfer learning framework for prioritizing cells in relation to disease

We propose DEGAS (Diagnostic Evidence GAuge of Single cells), a novel deep transfer learning framework, to transfer disease information from patients to cells. We call such transferrable information “impressions,” which allow individual cells to be associated with disease attributes like diagnosis, prognosis, and response to therapy. Using simulated data and ten diverse single-cell and patient bulk tissue transcriptomic datasets from glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and multiple myeloma (MM), we demonstrate the feasibility, flexibility, and broad applications of the DEGAS framework. DEGAS analysis on myeloma single-cell transcriptomics identified PHF19(high) myeloma cells associated with progression. Availability: https://github.com/tsteelejohnson91/DEGAS. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13073-022-01012-2.