HRAGNN: A cancer subtype identification method using multi-omics data and heterogeneous graph neural networks

Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, and its inherent diversity and heterogeneity pose significant challenges in early diagnosis, drug development, and prognosis. Accurate identification of cancer subtypes has therefore become a critical aspect of personalized cancer treatment. With the advancement of omics technologies, multi-omics data offer a more comprehensive understanding of cancer's underlying mechanisms. However, effectively integrating such diverse datasets to identify cancer subtypes remains a significant challenge. In this study, we introduce a novel approach, termed HRAGNN, for cancer subtype identification through the integration of multi-omics data. HRAGNN first constructs an integrated graph and then leverages Relational Attention Mechanism (RAM) and Graph Neural Network (GNN) to capture complex features across these multi-omics layers. Subsequently, the Multi-view Fusion Network (MVFN) is employed to fuse the features derived from the different omics data. We evaluated the performance of HRAGNN on three datasets, comparing it with other existing methods. The experimental results demonstrate that HRAGNN outperforms other approaches in terms of several key evaluation metrics.