Description:

TITLE: Hitchhiking Index: Identifying driver and passenger mutations in cancer

PRESENTER: Jasmine Foo, PhD
Assistant Professor of Mathematics, The University of Minnesota

Jasmine Foo is an McKnight Land Grant assistant professor at the University of Minnesota math department. She completed her PhD in Applied Math at Brown University in 2008, and carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard University/Dana Farber Cancer Center and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her research involves using stochastic processes to formulate and analyze mathematical theories of cancer evolution.
Abstract: The traditional view of cancer as a genetic disease that can successfully be treated with drugs targeting mutant oncoproteins has motivated whole-genome sequencing efforts in many human cancer types. However, only a subset of mutations found within the genomic landscape of cancer is likely to provide a fitness advantage to the cell. Distinguishing such “driver’ mutations from innocuous “passenger” events is critical for prioritizing the validation of candidate mutations in disease-relevant models. Here we propose a novel statistical index, called the Hitchhiking Index, which reflects the probability that any observed candidate gene is a passenger alteration, given the frequency of alterations in a cross-sectional cancer sample set. Our methodology is based upon a evolutionary population-dynamics model of mutation accumulation and selection in the tissue prior to cancer initiation as well as during tumorigenesis.