Inferring Latent Disease-lncRNA Associations by Label-Propagation Algorithm and Random Projection on a Heterogeneous Network

Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), a type of more than 200 nucleotides non-coding RNA, is related to various complex diseases. To precisely identify the potential lncRNA–disease association is important to understand the disease pathogenesis, to develop new drugs, and to design individualized diagnosis and treatment methods for different human diseases. Compared with the complexity and high cost of biological experiments, computational methods can quickly and effectively predict potential lncRNA–disease associations. Thus, it is a promising avenue to develop computational methods for lncRNA-disease prediction. However, owing to the low prediction accuracy ofstate of the art methods, it is vastly challenging to accurately and effectively identify lncRNA-disease at present. This article proposed an integrated method called LPARP, which is based on label-propagation algorithm and random projection to address the issue. Specifically, the label-propagation algorithm is initially used to obtain the estimated scores of lncRNA–disease associations, and then random projections are used to accurately predict disease-related lncRNAs.The empirical experiments showed that LAPRP achieved good prediction on three golddatasets, which is superior to existing state-of-the-art prediction methods. It can also be used to predict isolated diseases and new lncRNAs. Case studies of bladder cancer, esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma, and colorectal cancer further prove the reliability of the method. The proposed LPARP algorithm can predict the potential lncRNA–disease interactions stably and effectively with fewer data. LPARP can be used as an effective and reliable tool for biomedical research.