Method
GISTIC2.0 facilitates sensitive and confident localization of the targets of focal somatic copy-number alteration in human cancers
1 Cancer Program, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 7 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
2 Department of Medical Oncology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
3 Department of Cancer Biology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
4 The Center for Cancer Genome Discovery, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Genome Biology 2011, 12:R41 doi:10.1186/gb-2011-12-4-r41
Published: 28 April 2011Abstract
We describe methods with enhanced power and specificity to identify genes targeted by somatic copy-number alterations (SCNAs) that drive cancer growth. By separating SCNA profiles into underlying arm-level and focal alterations, we improve the estimation of background rates for each category. We additionally describe a probabilistic method for defining the boundaries of selected-for SCNA regions with user-defined confidence. Here we detail this revised computational approach, GISTIC2.0, and validate its performance in real and simulated datasets.
