Consensus approach for detection of cancer somatic mutations

Abstract

We present a consensus algorithm for detection of somatic mutations in cancer genomics data, based on integrating results of four published somatic mutation callers, MuTect2, MuSE, Varscan2 and Somatic Sniper. We generate consensus lists of cancer somatic mutations by using a simple voting mechanisms. Performances of cancer somatic mutations searching algorithms are verified by a quality index defined by the estimated proportion between driver and passenger mutations. We demonstrate, on the basis of three large NGS datasets from the TCGA database, that our consensus algorithm improves detection of cancer somatic mutations.