Network-Based Integration of Multi-omics Data for Biomarker Discovery in Acute Coronary Syndromes

Acute coronary syndromes (ACS), including ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI), remain leading causes of mortality worldwide. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, single-omics approaches have proven insufficient to capture the molecular complexity underlying ACS pathophysiology. Consequently, we adopted a multilayer network approach to construct phenotype-specific networks for STEMI and NSTEMI, alongside a control multilayer network derived from patients with stable angina pectoris (SAP). The multilayer networks were constructed using data collected from 200 patients within the CardioSCOPE project, integrating one metabolomics layer and one microRNA layer. Nodes represented molecular features, while edges were defined based on Pearson correlation coefficients. Network analyses included interlayer connection investigation, hub identification, and community detection, whose results were used to select a compact panel of discriminative features that achieved a cross-validated AUC of 0.84 (95% CI: 0.82–0.87) in a three-class separability test.