Estimating the probability of clonal relatedness of pairs of tumors in cancer patients.

ABSTRACT: Next generation sequencing panels are being used increasingly in cancer research to study tumor evolution. A specific statistical challenge is to compare the mutational profiles in different tumors from a patient to determine the strength of evidence that the tumors are clonally related, that is, derived from a single, founder clonal cell. The presence of identical mutations in each tumor provides evidence of clonal relatedness, although the strength of evidence from a match is related to how commonly the mutation is seen in the tumor type under investigation. This evidence must be weighed against the evidence in favor of independent tumors from non-matching mutations. In this article, we frame this challenge in the context of diagnosis using a novel random effects model. In this way, by a

SUBMITTER: Mauguen A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5677588 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature