Quantifying tumor heterogeneity in the microenvironment

Abstract:: Abstract Cancer has long been understood as a somatic evolutionary process, but many details of tumor progression remain elusive. Here, I will talk about computational methods to infer evolutionary pathways leading to tumour heterogeneity. Using a study in ovarian cancer I will describe how summary statistics of phylogenetic quantification of genetic heterogeneity can predict patient survival. Then, I will present probabilistic frameworks to reconstruct intra-tumor evolution from data obtained by bulk bisulfite sequencing of mixed tumor samples or single cell genomes. Our approaches jointly estimates the number and composition of clones in the sample as well as the most likely tree connecting them. I will finish with an outlook how to put cancer genomes in a tissue context by using image analysis and deconvolution of gene expression data. Citation Format: Florian Markowetz. Quantifying tumor heterogeneity in the microenvironment. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr SY38-03.

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