{
  "id": 3140040,
  "title": "BfBio: a graph-based tool for the prediction of Angiogenic Stalk Cell genes using a Personalized PageRank algorithm",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/bfbio-a-graph-based-tool-for-the-prediction-of-angiogenic-stalk-cell",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-24T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.23.746493v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A new computational tool called Brain-for-Biotech (BfBio) has been developed to predict the functional roles of under-annotated human protein coding genes. This tool is designed to identify genes important for vascular endothelial cells, which play critical roles in vessel formation, vascular homeostasis, hemostasis, blood/tissue barrier function, immunity, and cancer progression. BfBio leverages a Personalized PageRank algorithm on an integrated network of various omics datasets and publicly available gene-gene/protein-protein interaction databases.\n\nIn a study, BfBio was applied to infer the angiogenic stalk cell phenotype function in genes for which this function was previously unknown. The tool identified 49 genes, among which four were poorly characterized but possessed biologically relevant properties and were linked to cancer. This validation of BfBio's accuracy in predicting angiogenic stalk cell genes with a high Area Under Receiver Operative Characteristic (AUC-ROC) performance of 0.837 demonstrates the potential of this tool as a robust method for prioritizing novel therapeutic targets in vascular biology.",
  "summary": "Although most human protein coding genes have functional annotations in databases, such as GeneCards, many remain poorly characterized. To address this gap, computational tools can be leveraged to predict the functional roles of under-annotated genes by extracting patterns from complex biological networks. Here we introduce Brain-for-Biotech (BfBio), a framework designed to identify genes…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}