# Detecting Drug Synergy and Antagonism with PharmacoGx 3.0+

# Synergy/Antagonism Biomarker Discovery

For a comprehensive introduction to detecting biomarkers of drug synergy or antagonism with CoreGx and PharmacoGx, please see our workshop from BioC2022.

# Mathews Griner

The Mathews Griner dataset was generated in a high-throughput drug combination screening study conducted to explore potential drug synergies and antagonisms in a panel of 459 compounds combined with the Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor ibrutinib in cancer cell lines from the activated B-cell like subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (Mathews Griner et al. 2014). The study uses a 6 x 6 combination matrix design, where each respective drug in a combination undergoes a 4-fold dilution series over 4 steps, with the last well left untreated. This can be conceptualized as a drug combination matrix where the last row and column represent monotherapy experiments for each compound in the pair. A total of 36 viability measurements were taken via the CellTitreGlo assay for each drug pair, being comprised of pair-wise combinations of each dose level in the respective dilution series matrix.

We selected this dataset for our vignette to simplify comparison with the `SynergyFinder` package, which was previously used to analyze this dataset (Yadav et al. 2015).

    library(PharmacoGx)
    library(CoreGx)
    library(data.table)
    library(ggplot2)

## Reading in Raw Data

We have included a compressed CSV version of the Mathews Griner dataset which we curated to have informative compound names. You can read the file in with your CSV reader of choice.

    input_file <- system.file("extdata/mathews_griner.csv.tar.gz",
        package="PharmacoGx")
    mathews_griner <- fread(input_file)

## Experimental Design Hypothesis

Before modelling dose-response or treatment synergy/antagonism with PharmacoGx we must first build a `TreatmentResponseExperiment` from our high-throughput drug combination data. This S4 class was designed to store and analyze high dimensional treatment response data, such as the dose-response screens in cancer cell lines which are the subject of this analysis. For a detailed explanation of the class design, please refer to the TreatmentResponseExperiment vignette in CoreGx.

Due to the highly diverse set of experimental designs used in drug combination studies, the first step in any drug combination analysis is to generate a hypothesis about the study design. For the `TreatmentResponseExperiment`, we must identify which columns in our raw data are required to uniquely identify every treatment (our rows), sample (our columns) and observation (our assays). As a starting point we recommend trying treatment identifiers and their respective doses for rows, sample identifiers for columns, and the union of these for observations.1

    groups <- list(
        rowDataMap=c(
            treatment1id="RowName", treatment2id="ColName",
            treatment1dose="RowConcs", treatment2dose="ColConcs"
        ),
        colDataMap=c("sampleid")
    )
    groups[["assayMap"]] <- c(groups$rowDataMap, groups$colDataMap)
    (groups)

    ## $rowDataMap
    ##   treatment1id   treatment2id treatment1dose treatment2dose
    ##      "RowName"      "ColName"     "RowConcs"     "ColConcs"
    ##
    ## $colDataMap
    ## [1] "sampleid"
    ##
    ## $assayMap
    ##   treatment1id   treatment2id treatment1dose treatment2dose
    ##      "RowName"      "ColName"     "RowConcs"     "ColConcs"     "sampleid"

## Handling Undocumented Replicates

These initial guesses can be insufficient to uniquely identify our treatments or samples if there are technical or biological replicates in the data. While some publications are explicit about the presence of such measurements, others are not and require us to explore the data to identify them. In general, we recommend undocumented replicates be treated as technical and used to quantify noise in the assay unless there is a good reason to believe they are from distinct biological entities.

We can identify undocumented replicates using a “group by” operation. This operation uses the split-apply-combine strategy (also called Map-Reduce) to compute some aggregation over subsets of a `data.frame`. A grouping has undocumented replicates if more than one row is assigned to any group which we hypothesized to uniquely identify the observations in our data. We check this below using the `.N` special variable from the data.table package, which counts the number of instances in each group defined by the columns in `by`. This operation could also be accomplished with `dplyr` or even base R, though they may be slower and have less concise syntax.

    # The := operator modifies a data.table by reference (i.e., without making a copy)
    mathews_griner[, tech_rep := seq_len(.N), by=c(groups[["assayMap"]])]
    if (max(mathews_griner[["tech_rep"]]) > 1) {
        groups[["colDataMap"]] <- c(groups[["colDataMap"]], "tech_rep")
        groups[["assayMap"]] <- c(groups[["assayMap"]], "tech_rep")
    } else {
        # delete the additional column if not needed
        message("No technical replicates in this dataset!")
        mathews_griner[["tech_reps"]] <- NULL
    }

For the Mathews Griner dataset, we do indeed have undocumented replicates! These will be treated a technical replicates.

## Using the `TREDataMapper`

Once we are confident we know which columns are needed to uniquely identify our treatments and samples, we can create a `TREDataMapper` using our raw data and mapping hypothesis. The `TREDataMapper` is a helper class designed to make creating a `TreatmentResponseExperiment` from diverse drug combination experimental designs easier for users.2

The `guessMapping` method does the necessary internal work to map additional columns in your dataset to the appopriate category—treatment metadata, sample metadata or assay data—and returns the column names for each group in the “mapped_columns” list item.

    (treMapper <- TREDataMapper(rawdata=mathews_griner))

    ## <TREDataMapper>
    ## rawdata: dim(16776, 21)
    ##      BlockId   Col   Row viability AssayId  Size          RowSid      RowName
    ##        <int> <int> <int>     <num>   <int> <int>          <char>       <char>
    ##   1:       1     1     1  14.47499     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   2:       1     2     1  28.67605     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   3:       1     3     1  48.73285     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   13 variables not shown: [RowTarget <char>, ColSid <char>, ColName
    ##     <char>, ColTarget <char>, RowIC50 <int>, ColIC50 <int>, RowConcs
    ##     <num>, ColConcs <num>, RowConcUnit <char>, ColConcUnit <char>, ...]
    ## rowDataMap:
    ##   rowIDs:
    ##   rowMeta:
    ## colDataMap:
    ##   colIDs:
    ##   colMeta:
    ## assayMap:
    ## metadataMap: NA

We will know we have successfully mapped all of our data if the “unmapped” list item in our guess has no column names in it. If this is not the case, you may have to refine your hypothesis to include additional information needed to uniquely identify each observation in your dataset.3

    (guess <- guessMapping(treMapper, groups, subset=TRUE))

    ## [CoreGx::guessMapping,LongTableDataMapper-method]
    ##  Mapping for group rowDataMap: RowName, ColName, RowConcs, ColConcs

    ## [CoreGx::guessMapping,LongTableDataMapper-method]
    ##  Mapping for group colDataMap: sampleid, tech_rep

    ## [CoreGx::guessMapping,LongTableDataMapper-method]
    ##  Mapping for group assayMap: RowName, ColName, RowConcs, ColConcs, sampleid, tech_rep

    ## $metadata
    ## $metadata$id_columns
    ## [1] NA
    ##
    ## $metadata$mapped_columns
    ## [1] "AssayId"     "Size"        "ColSid"      "ColTarget"   "RowIC50"
    ## [6] "ColIC50"     "RowConcUnit" "ColConcUnit" "tissueid"
    ##
    ##
    ## $rowDataMap
    ## $rowDataMap$id_columns
    ##   treatment1id   treatment2id treatment1dose treatment2dose
    ##      "RowName"      "ColName"     "RowConcs"     "ColConcs"
    ##
    ## $rowDataMap$mapped_columns
    ## [1] "Col"       "Row"       "RowTarget"
    ##
    ##
    ## $colDataMap
    ## $colDataMap$id_columns
    ## [1] "sampleid" "tech_rep"
    ##
    ## $colDataMap$mapped_columns
    ## character(0)
    ##
    ##
    ## $assayMap
    ## $assayMap$id_columns
    ##   treatment1id   treatment2id treatment1dose treatment2dose
    ##      "RowName"      "ColName"     "RowConcs"     "ColConcs"     "sampleid"
    ##
    ##     "tech_rep"
    ##
    ## $assayMap$mapped_columns
    ## [1] "BlockId"   "viability" "RowSid"
    ##
    ##
    ## $unmapped
    ## character(0)

Once we have mapped all our columns, we can assign their names to the `TREDataMapper` object and use it to construct the `TreatmentResponseExperiment` we will use in downstream dose-response and synergy-antagonism modelling.4

    metadataMap(treMapper) <- list(experiment_metadata=guess$metadata$mapped_columns)
    rowDataMap(treMapper) <- guess$rowDataMap
    colDataMap(treMapper) <- guess$colDataMap
    assayMap(treMapper) <- list(raw=guess$assayMap)
    treMapper

    ## <TREDataMapper>
    ## rawdata: dim(16776, 21)
    ##      BlockId   Col   Row viability AssayId  Size          RowSid      RowName
    ##        <int> <int> <int>     <num>   <int> <int>          <char>       <char>
    ##   1:       1     1     1  14.47499     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   2:       1     2     1  28.67605     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   3:       1     3     1  48.73285     241     6 NCGC00181170-01 Bendamustine
    ##   13 variables not shown: [RowTarget <char>, ColSid <char>, ColName
    ##     <char>, ColTarget <char>, RowIC50 <int>, ColIC50 <int>, RowConcs
    ##     <num>, ColConcs <num>, RowConcUnit <char>, ColConcUnit <char>, ...]
    ## rowDataMap:
    ##   rowIDs: RowName, ColName, RowConcs, ColConcs
    ##   rowMeta: Col, Row, RowTarget
    ## colDataMap:
    ##   colIDs: sampleid, tech_rep
    ##   colMeta:
    ## assayMap:
    ##   raw:
    ##     keys: RowName, ColName, RowConcs, ColConcs, sampleid, tech_rep
    ##     values: BlockId, viability, RowSid
    ## metadataMap:
    ##   experiment_metadata: AssayId, Size, ColSid, ColTarget, RowIC50, ColIC50, RowConcUnit, ColConcUnit, tissueid

## Creating a `TreatmentResponseExperiment`

PharmacoGx includes the `metaConstruct` method to simplify creation of a `TreatmentResponseExperiment` object. Simply call it on the `TREDataMapper` you created previously to instantiate the object.

    (tre <- metaConstruct(treMapper))

    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:29 Building assay index...
    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:29 Joining rowData to assayIndex...
    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:30 Joining colData to assayIndex...
    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:30 Joining assays to assayIndex...
    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:32 Setting assayIndex key...
    ## 2026-05-30 07:16:32 Building LongTable...

    ## <TreatmentResponseExperiment>
    ##    dim:  16668 2
    ##    assays(1): raw
    ##    rownames(16668): (-)-Gossypol:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):0:0 (-)-Gossypol:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):0:0.1954 ... methyl jasmonate:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):2500:12.5 methyl jasmonate:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):2500:50
    ##    rowData(7): treatment1id treatment2id treatment1dose ... Col Row RowTarget
    ##    colnames(2): TMD8:1 TMD8:2
    ##    colData(2): sampleid tech_rep
    ##    metadata(1): experiment_metadata

## Normalizing Treatment Response

The viability measurements in the Mathews Griner data have already been normalized relative to the time zero control. However, PharmacoGx recommends further normalizing against the untreated control to limit the range of your viability measurements to be close to [0, 1]. The untreated control is the well which has only been treated with the drug delivery vehicle (usually the solvent DMSO) and has thus been allowed to grow over the treatment exposure time.

To accomplish this for our current dataset, we can use a sub-query where we select the viability at index (6, 6) of our drug combination matrix. This well has not been treated with either drug. Dividing by it normalizes the observed viability in our treatment wells relative to any growth that may have occured during treatment. We further truncate our viability values at zero, since any values below this are likely a result of technical noise in our assay.5

    raw <- tre[["raw"]]
    raw[,
        viability := viability / .SD[treatment1dose == 0 & treatment2dose == 0, viability],
        by=c("treatment1id", "treatment2id", "sampleid", "tech_rep")
    ]
    raw[, viability := pmax(0, viability)]  # truncate min viability at 0
    tre[["raw"]] <- raw

As a sanity check that our normalization was effective, we will look at the range of our viabiltiy values. In most cases, this should be very close to [0, 1], since we do not expect treatment with one or more compound to increase the growth of our cell lines relative to the untreated control.

    tre[["raw"]][, range(viability)]

    ## [1]  0.00000 60.96139

Some of our treated viabilties are >60x higher than our control! This is very unlikely to be a real signal and probably indicates there was an issue with the viability measurement for our dose 0 x 0 well. To quality control our results, we will find the treatment combination with this observation and remove it from downstream analysis. It is essential to perform regular sanity checks to ensure your data is plausible given the experimental setup.

    (bad_treatments <- tre[["raw"]][viability > 2, unique(treatment1id)])

    ## [1] "IKK-16"

Only a single treatment has a viability measurement higher than twice our control. We will remove this and leave the remaining values in place, since we can simply truncate them at viability of 1 to include as many combinations in our analyses as possible.

    (tre <- subset(tre, !(treatment1id %in% bad_treatments)))

    ## <TreatmentResponseExperiment>
    ##    dim:  16632 2
    ##    assays(1): raw
    ##    rownames(16632): (-)-Gossypol:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):0:0 (-)-Gossypol:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):0:0.1954 ... methyl jasmonate:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):2500:12.5 methyl jasmonate:Ibrutinib (PCI-32765):2500:50
    ##    rowData(7): treatment1id treatment2id treatment1dose ... Col Row RowTarget
    ##    colnames(2): TMD8:1 TMD8:2
    ##    colData(2): sampleid tech_rep
    ##    metadata(1): experiment_metadata

We will inspect the viability range again to ensure the bad data has been removed.

    tre[["raw"]][, range(viability)]

    ## [1] 0.000000 1.858926

The range for viabilities is now much more reasonable, and we can move on to fitting dose-response curves to our monotherapy measurements.

## Fitting Monotherapy Curves

The `endoaggregate` method allows us to extract an assay from our `TreatmentResponseExperiment`, compute a group by (aggregation) over it, then assign it back to our `TreatmentResponseExperiment` via a join, all in a single function call. Since we currently only want to fit curves to the monotherapy experiments in our drug matrix we will use the `subset` argument to filter the assay to only monotherapy rows before applying the aggregation.

This method is useful to update existing assays, or to create new ones. The `assay` argument specifies the assay to aggregate over and the `target` argument specifies the name of the assay to assign the results to. If the `target` does not already exist, a new assay will be created otherwise the specified `target` will be updated. If you exclude this argument, the `assay` you select automatically becomes the `target`. The `endoaggregate` method is endomorphic, a class of methods that always return the same type they are called on. This means that `endoaggregate` always returns a new `TreatmentResponseExperiment`.

While subsetting out our monotherapy viabilities, we can also summarize viabilities over our techinical replicates by excluding that column from our `by` argument. Any additional arguments to `endoaggregate` via `...` are assumed to be aggregation calls and will be computed for each group identified in `by` and assigned to `target`. The name given to any argument in `...` will be the column name for that computation in the resulting `TreatmentResponseExperiment`.

    tre_qc <- tre |>
        endoaggregate(
            subset=treatment2dose == 0,  # filter to only monotherapy rows
            assay="raw",
            target="mono_viability",  # create a new assay named mono_viability
            mean_viability=pmin(1, mean(viability)),
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment1dose", "sampleid")
        )

Once we have isolated our monotherapy viabilities, we can once again use `endoaggregate` to fit our dose-response curves. This time we will use the `enlist=FALSE` option which allows us to assign intermediate variables during our aggregation. Pass in an entire code block to `endoggregate` to use this feature and only the returned list will be assigned to the `target` assay, with each list item as a column with the corresponding name. To prevent repeating our curve fit parameters, we will create a new assay for them since we are now summarizing over dose. This helps ensure we use only as much memory as is necessary to store the analysis results in our `TreatmentResponseExperiment`.

    tre_fit <- tre_qc |>
        endoaggregate(
            {  # the entire code block is evaluated for each group in our group by
                # 1. fit a log logistic curve over the dose range
                fit <- PharmacoGx::logLogisticRegression(treatment1dose, mean_viability,
                    viability_as_pct=FALSE)
                # 2. compute curve summary metrics
                ic50 <- PharmacoGx::computeIC50(treatment1dose, Hill_fit=fit)
                aac <- PharmacoGx::computeAUC(treatment1dose, Hill_fit=fit)
                # 3. assemble the results into a list, each item will become a
                #   column in the target assay.
                list(
                    HS=fit[["HS"]],
                    E_inf = fit[["E_inf"]],
                    EC50 = fit[["EC50"]],
                    Rsq=as.numeric(unlist(attributes(fit))),
                    aac_recomputed=aac,
                    ic50_recomputed=ic50
                )
            },
            assay="mono_viability",
            target="mono_profiles",
            enlist=FALSE,  # this option enables the use of a code block for aggregation
            by=c("treatment1id", "sampleid"),
            nthread=2  # parallelize over multiple cores to speed up the computation
        )

## Joining Monotherapy Curve Fits to Combinations

Since we require the monotherapy curve parameters to calculate dose-response curve dependent synergy metrics such as Loewe and ZIP, we will add these to a new drug combination assay to make computing synergy metrics possible within a single `endoaggregate` call.6

    tre_combo <- tre_fit |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="raw",
            target="combo_viability",
            mean(viability),
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment2id", "treatment1dose", "treatment2dose",
                "sampleid")
        )

The `mergeAssays` method is a convenient way to perform joins between the assays of a `TreatmentResponseExperiment` endomorphically. It is equivalent to extracting the assays from the object, performing a join using the `merge` command, and assigning back to the assay specified as the `x` argument. This method accepts all the same parameters as the `data.table::merge` function, but requires the assays in `x` and `y` be specified as assay names instead of actual assay tables.7

    tre_combo <- tre_combo |>
        mergeAssays(
            x="combo_viability",
            y="mono_profiles",
            by=c("treatment1id", "sampleid")
        ) |>
        mergeAssays(
            x="combo_viability",
            y="mono_profiles",
            by.x=c("treatment2id", "sampleid"),
            by.y=c("treatment1id", "sampleid"),
            suffixes=c("_1", "_2")  # add sufixes to duplicate column names
        )

The `endoaggregate` method is compatible with standard `data.table` syntax, since `assays` are implemented internally using this package. As such, we can use a sub-query (via `.SD`) to pull out the viability measurements for each individual drug in our combination. This value is needed to compute the Highest Single Agent and Bliss synergy metrics. We will add these values to our “combo_viability” assay so all the synergy metrics can be calculated in a single step.8

    tre_combo <- tre_combo |>
        endoaggregate(
            viability_1=.SD[treatment2dose == 0, mean_viability],
            assay="combo_viability",
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment1dose", "sampleid")
        ) |>
        endoaggregate(
            viability_2=.SD[treatment1dose == 0, mean_viability],
            assay="combo_viability",
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment2dose", "sampleid")
        )

Now that we have assembled all the requisite information into the “combo_viability” assay, we are ready to compute our synergy scores!

## Compute Synergy Scores

Drug synergy or antagonism is detected as the deviation in the observerd treatment response above or below the expected response. Determining the expected response, however, is non-trivial and several different reference models have been proposed in the literature for the expected response to a drug combination. PharmacoGx has implemented functions to calculate the expected response under the Highest Single Agent (HSA), Loewe Additivity, Zero Interaction Potency (ZIP) and Bliss independence null models of drug synergy.9

These models are discussed in more detail in our workshop from the 2022 Bioconductor conference, linked at the top of this vignette. Addition resources to learn about drug synergy models include (Yadav et al. 2015) for mathematical definitions of each reference model and (Vlot et al. 2019) for exploring the assumptions of each model and how they can affect resulting drug synergy predicitons.

Below we use PharmacoGx to compute the expected response under all four null reference models of drug synergy.

    tre_synergy <- tre_combo |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="combo_viability",
            HSA_ref=PharmacoGx::computeHSA(viability_1, viability_2),
            Bliss_ref=PharmacoGx::computeBliss(viability_1, viability_2),
            Loewe_ref=PharmacoGx::computeLoewe(
                treatment1dose, HS_1=HS_1, EC50_1=EC50_1, E_inf_1=E_inf_1,
                treatment2dose, HS_2=HS_2, EC50_2=EC50_2, E_inf_2=E_inf_2
            ),
            ZIP_ref=computeZIP(
                treatment1dose, HS_1=HS_1, EC50_1=EC50_1, E_inf_1=E_inf_1,
                treatment2dose, HS_2=HS_2, EC50_2=EC50_2, E_inf_2=E_inf_2
            ),
            by=assayKeys(tre_combo, "combo_viability"),
            nthread=2
        )

Once we have our null hypotheis for no drug synergy, computing a synergy score is as simple as taking the difference or the ratio between the observed drug combination viability and each of our reference models. We prefer taking the difference, since the resulting value can be interpreted as the proportion of cell death above or below the expected value for each model.

    tre_synergy <- tre_synergy |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="combo_viability",
            HSA_score=HSA_ref - mean_viability,
            Bliss_score=Bliss_ref - mean_viability,
            Loewe_score=Loewe_ref - mean_viability,
            ZIP_score=ZIP_ref - mean_viability,
            by=assayKeys(tre_synergy, "combo_viability")
        )

In addition to standard synergy scores, the ZIP model also provides a more subtle metric of drug synergy that attempts to quantify shifts in the relative potency and efficacy of drugs in a combination. This metrics is referred to as ZIP delta, and is computed from a two-way curve fit for the expected effect of adding drug 1 to drug 2 and drug 2 to drug 1 for a pair in combinaton. (Yadav et al. 2015).

Below we demonstrate how to compute ZIP delta using PharmacoGx. We first use the `estimateProjParams` method to compute the dose-response curve parameters for the two-way curve fits.

    tre_zip <- tre_synergy |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="combo_viability",
            subset=treatment2dose != 0,
            {
                zip_fit <- estimateProjParams(
                    dose_to=treatment1dose,
                    combo_viability=mean_viability,
                    dose_add=unique(treatment2dose),
                    EC50_add=unique(EC50_2),
                    HS_add=unique(HS_2),
                    E_inf_add=unique(E_inf_2)
                )
                setNames(zip_fit, paste0(names(zip_fit), "_2_to_1"))
            },
            enlist=FALSE,
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment2id", "treatment2dose", "sampleid"),
            nthread=2
        )
    tre_zip <- tre_zip |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="combo_viability",
            subset=treatment1dose != 0,
            {
                zip_fit <- estimateProjParams(
                    dose_to=treatment2dose,
                    combo_viability=mean_viability,
                    dose_add=unique(treatment1dose),
                    EC50_add=unique(EC50_1),
                    HS_add=unique(HS_1),
                    E_inf_add=unique(E_inf_1)
                )
                setNames(zip_fit, paste0(names(zip_fit), "_1_to_2"))
            },
            enlist=FALSE,
            by=c("treatment1id", "treatment2id", "treatment1dose", "sampleid"),
            nthread=2
        )

Then we use the `.deltaScore` function to compute the final delta score using the two-way fit curve parameters from the previous step.

    tre_zip <- tre_zip |>
        endoaggregate(
            assay="combo_viability",
            ZIP_delta=.deltaScore(
                EC50_1_to_2=EC50_proj_1_to_2, EC50_2_to_1=EC50_proj_2_to_1,
                EC50_1=EC50_1, EC50_2=EC50_2,
                HS_1_to_2=HS_proj_1_to_2, HS_2_to_1=HS_proj_2_to_1,
                HS_1=HS_1, HS_2=HS_2,
                E_inf_1_to_2=E_inf_proj_1_to_2, E_inf_2_to_1=E_inf_proj_2_to_1,
                E_inf_1=E_inf_1, E_inf_2=E_inf_2,
                treatment1dose=treatment1dose, treatment2dose=treatment2dose,
                ZIP=ZIP_ref
            ),
            by=assayKeys(tre_zip, "combo_viability")
        )

Now that we have computed synergy scores for all of our drug pairs, we can visualize our results before moving on to downstream analyses looking for biomarkers of synergy and antagonism.

## Visualizing Drug Synergy

Since the Loewe and ZIP synergy metrics require fitting dose-response curves, it is possible that bad fits could yield misleading synergy scores. Given this fact, we recommend applying a curve fit quality filter before continuing with downstream analysis. Below we require curves to obtain an R-squared greater than 0.5 (that is, >50% variance of the data explained by the fit) before ranking treatment pairs by their synergy score. If you are ranking using HSA or Bliss, such a filter is not required, as these two metrics use only the observed monotherapy viabilities to calculate the expected viability.

The following code filters to only high quality curve fits and then finds the 15 most synergistic treatment pairs based on their ZIP delta score.

    combo_viab <- tre_zip[["combo_viability"]]
    (top_15_combo <- combo_viab[
        Rsq_1 > 0.5 & Rsqr_1_to_2 > 0.5 & Rsqr_2_to_1 > 0.5,
        .(
            max_delta=max(ZIP_delta, na.rm=TRUE),
            mean_delta=mean(ZIP_delta, na.rm=TRUE),
            max_bliss=max(Bliss_score, na.rm=TRUE),
            mean_bliss=mean(Bliss_score, na.rm=TRUE)
        ),
        by=.(treatment1id, treatment2id, sampleid)
    ][
        order(-max_delta),
        unique(.SD)
    ][1:15])

Before visualizing drug synergy, we recommend filling in any NA synergy scores to avoid gaps in the produced plots. This can be easily accomplished using the `data.table::setnafill` function with the last observation carried forward strategy.

    top_15_combo_df <- combo_viab[top_15_combo, on=c('treatment1id', 'treatment2id', 'sampleid')]
    # Last observation carried forward for NA/NaN delta scores, to make plot look nicer
    setnafill(top_15_combo_df, type="locf", cols="ZIP_delta")

The `ggplot2` package can be used to visualize the synergy scores for our top 15 most synergistic treatment pairs. Below we provide example code to produce both a contour plot (synergy surface) as well as a heat map to gain a more inuitive understanding of how synergy or antagonism changes over the full dose range of each drug combination matrix.

    top_15_combo_df |>
        ggplot(aes(x=treatment1dose, y=treatment2dose, z=ZIP_delta * 100)) +
        scale_x_log10(oob=scales::squish_infinite) +
        scale_y_log10(oob=scales::squish_infinite) +
        geom_contour_filled(
            breaks=c(-100, -80, -40, -20, -10, -1, 1, 10, 20, 40, 80, 100)
        ) +
        facet_wrap(~ treatment1id, nrow=3, ncol=5) +
        scale_fill_brewer(palette="RdBu", direction=-1, drop=FALSE)

    top_15_combo_df |>
        ggplot(aes(x=factor(treatment1dose), y=factor(treatment2dose))) +
        geom_tile(aes(fill=ZIP_delta * 100)) +
        facet_wrap(~treatment1id, nrow=3, ncol=5) +
        scale_fill_gradient2(low="blue", mid="white", high="red", midpoint=0)

To learn how to use synergy scores for biomarker discovery please review our workshop from Bioconductor 2022, linked in the first section of this document.

# Session Info

    ## R version 4.6.0 (2026-04-24)
    ## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
    ## Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
    ##
    ## Matrix products: default
    ## BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libblas.so.3
    ## LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openblas-pthread/libopenblasp-r0.3.26.so;  LAPACK version 3.12.0
    ##
    ## locale:
    ##  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
    ##  [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
    ##  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
    ##  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
    ##  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
    ## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
    ##
    ## time zone: Etc/UTC
    ## tzcode source: system (glibc)
    ##
    ## attached base packages:
    ## [1] stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods
    ## [8] base
    ##
    ## other attached packages:
    ##  [1] ggplot2_4.0.3               data.table_1.18.4
    ##  [3] PharmacoGx_3.17.0           CoreGx_2.17.0
    ##  [5] SummarizedExperiment_1.43.0 Biobase_2.73.1
    ##  [7] GenomicRanges_1.65.0        Seqinfo_1.3.0
    ##  [9] IRanges_2.47.2              S4Vectors_0.51.3
    ## [11] MatrixGenerics_1.25.0       matrixStats_1.5.0
    ## [13] BiocGenerics_0.59.6         generics_0.1.4
    ## [15] knitcitations_1.0.12        knitr_1.51
    ## [17] BiocStyle_2.41.0
    ##
    ## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
    ##   [1] bitops_1.0-9                rlang_1.2.0
    ##   [3] magrittr_2.0.5              shinydashboard_0.7.3
    ##   [5] otel_0.2.0                  compiler_4.6.0
    ##   [7] reshape2_1.4.5              vctrs_0.7.3
    ##   [9] relations_0.6-17            stringr_1.6.0
    ##  [11] pkgconfig_2.0.3             crayon_1.5.3
    ##  [13] fastmap_1.2.0               backports_1.5.1
    ##  [15] XVector_0.53.0              caTools_1.18.3
    ##  [17] promises_1.5.0              rmarkdown_2.31
    ##  [19] coop_0.6-3                  xfun_0.57
    ##  [21] MultiAssayExperiment_1.39.0 cachem_1.1.0
    ##  [23] jsonlite_2.0.0              RefManageR_1.4.0
    ##  [25] SnowballC_0.7.1             later_1.4.8
    ##  [27] DelayedArray_0.39.3         BiocParallel_1.47.0
    ##  [29] parallel_4.6.0              sets_1.0-25
    ##  [31] cluster_2.1.8.2             R6_2.6.1
    ##  [33] bslib_0.11.0                stringi_1.8.7
    ##  [35] RColorBrewer_1.1-3          limma_3.69.1
    ##  [37] boot_1.3-32                 lubridate_1.9.5
    ##  [39] jquerylib_0.1.4             Rcpp_1.1.1-1.1
    ##  [41] R.utils_2.13.0              downloader_0.4.1
    ##  [43] httpuv_1.6.17               Matrix_1.7-5
    ##  [45] igraph_2.3.1                timechange_0.4.0
    ##  [47] tidyselect_1.2.1            abind_1.4-8
    ##  [49] yaml_2.3.12                 gplots_3.3.0
    ##  [51] codetools_0.2-20            lattice_0.22-9
    ##  [53] tibble_3.3.1                plyr_1.8.9
    ##  [55] withr_3.0.2                 shiny_1.13.0
    ##  [57] BumpyMatrix_1.21.0          S7_0.2.2
    ##  [59] evaluate_1.0.5              bench_1.1.4
    ##  [61] xml2_1.5.2                  pillar_1.11.1
    ##  [63] lsa_0.73.4                  BiocManager_1.30.27
    ##  [65] KernSmooth_2.23-26          checkmate_2.3.4
    ##  [67] DT_0.34.0                   shinyjs_2.1.1
    ##  [69] piano_2.29.0                scales_1.4.0
    ##  [71] gtools_3.9.5                xtable_1.8-8
    ##  [73] marray_1.91.0               glue_1.8.1
    ##  [75] slam_0.1-55                 maketools_1.3.2
    ##  [77] tools_4.6.0                 sys_3.4.3
    ##  [79] fgsea_1.39.0                visNetwork_2.1.4
    ##  [81] buildtools_1.0.0            fastmatch_1.1-8
    ##  [83] cowplot_1.2.0               grid_4.6.0
    ##  [85] bibtex_0.5.2                cli_3.6.6
    ##  [87] S4Arrays_1.13.0             dplyr_1.2.1
    ##  [89] gtable_0.3.6                R.methodsS3_1.8.2
    ##  [91] sass_0.4.10                 digest_0.6.39
    ##  [93] SparseArray_1.13.2          htmlwidgets_1.6.4
    ##  [95] farver_2.1.2                R.oo_1.27.1
    ##  [97] htmltools_0.5.9             lifecycle_1.0.5
    ##  [99] httr_1.4.8                  statmod_1.5.2
    ## [101] mime_0.13

# References

Mathews Griner, Lesley A., Rajarshi Guha, Paul Shinn, et al. 2014. “High-Throughput Combinatorial Screening Identifies Drugs That Cooperate with Ibrutinib to Kill Activated B-celllike Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma Cells.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (6): 2349–54. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1311846111.
Vlot, Anna H. C., Natália Aniceto, Michael P. Menden, Gudrun Ulrich-Merzenich, and Andreas Bender. 2019. “Applying Synergy Metrics to Combination Screening Data: Agreements, Disagreements and Pitfalls.” Drug Discovery Today 24 (12): 2286–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2019.09.002.
Yadav, Bhagwan, Krister Wennerberg, Tero Aittokallio, and Jing Tang. 2015. “Searching for Drug Synergy in Complex Dose an Interaction Potency Model.” Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal 13 (January): 504–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2015.09.001.

1. Giving names to columns in your group list will automatically rename them when the `TreatmentResponseExperiment` gets created!↩︎

2. See the `TreatmentResponseExperiment` vignette in CoreGx to learn more about the `TREDataMapper` class.↩︎

3. The metadata item in the list returned from `guessMapping` captures all columns in our dataset which only have one unique value. These will be assigned to the `metadata` slot of the `TreatmentResponseExperiment` to save memory.↩︎

4. We need to give names to the `metadataMap` and `assayMap` in the `TREDataMapper`, since there can be more than one item in each of these slots of a `TreatmentResponseExperiment`.↩︎

5. The `.SD` special variable, short for “subset data”, is a data.table feature that allows you to implement complex sub-queries. It contains a reference to the table being queried.↩︎

6. If we don’t name an aggregation in `endoaggregate` a default name will be inferred from the function name and its first argument. In this case, the column will be called “mean_viability”.↩︎

7. The endomorphic nature of this operation allows the result to be piped into additional calls, as demonstrated below.↩︎

8. The `endoaggregate` method can also be used to apply arbitrary functions to the data in an assay. Just specify the entire assay key to the by argument to compute the function for every row (i.e., to perform no aggregation or summary of the data).↩︎

9. The formula for each of these models is different when using proportion of response vs proportion of viability. In PharmacoGx all synergy computations assume we are working with proportion viability. If you instead have response values you can convert them to viabilities by subtracting the normalized responses from 1 (or 100 if using percentages).↩︎