Method and device for determining and quantifying modes of activation of biological pathways in individual cells

A device for obtaining and quantifying modes of activation of biological pathways in individual cells to determine therapeutic targets for cancer therapy, comprising:

• at least one input interface configured to receive a) sequencing data obtained by a single-cell RNA sequencing method, said sequencing data being characterized by a set of genes and a set of individual cells, and b) a plurality of gene lists, each gene list corresponding to a biological pathway,
• at least one processor configured to:
• determine a gene-cell expression matrix based on said sequencing data and said plurality of gene lists, said gene-expression matrix comprising rows corresponding to genes of said set of genes referred to as pathway genes and belonging to at least one among said gene lists,
• carry out a principal component analysis (PCA) on said gene-expression matrix, so as to obtain a plurality of modes of activation of at least one among said biological pathways, each mode of activation corresponding to one principal component obtained from the PCA,
• selecting a subset of modes of activation among said plurality of modes of activation,
• determining a matrix referred to as activity matrix, said activity matrix comprising scores quantifying a level of activity of each mode of activation among said subset of modes of activation within each individual cell among said set of individual cells,
• at least one output interface configured to output said activity matrix.