Cancer cells can have thousands of mutations in their DNA. However, only a handful of those actually drive the progression of cancer; the rest are just along for the ride.
Distinguishing these harmful driver mutations from the neutral passengers could help researchers identify better drug targets. To boost those efforts, an MIT-led team has built a new computer model that can rapidly scan the entire genome of cancer cells and identify mutations that occur more frequently than expected, suggesting that they are driving tumor growth. This type of prediction has been challenging because some genomic regions have an extremely high frequency of passenger mutations, drowning out the signal of actual drivers.
