Purityest: Estimating purity of human tumor samples using next-generation sequencing data

Abstract

We developed a novel algorithm, PurityEst, to infer the tumor purity level from the allelic differential representation of heterozygous loci with somatic mutations in a human tumor sample with a matched normal tissue using next-generation sequencing data. We applied our tool to a whole cancer genome sequencing datasets and demonstrated the accuracy of PurityEst compared with DNA copy number-based estimation. © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.