Computational Methods for Characterizing Cancer Mutational Heterogeneity

Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have allowed the characterization of somatic mutations in a large number of cancer genomes at an unprecedented level of detail, revealing the extreme genetic heterogeneity of cancer at two different levels: inter-tumor, with different patients of the same cancer type presenting different collections of somatic mutations, and intra-tumor, with different clones coexisting within the same tumor. Both inter-tumor and intra-tumor heterogeneity have crucial implications for clinical practices. Here, we review computational methods that use somatic alterations measured through next-generation DNA sequencing technologies for characterizing tumor heterogeneity and its association with clinical variables. We first review computational methods for studying inter-tumor heterogeneity, focusing on methods that attempt to summarize cancer heterogeneity by discovering pathways that are commonly mutated across different patients of the same cancer type. We then review computational methods for characterizing intra-tumor heterogeneity using information from bulk sequencing data or from single cell sequencing data. Finally, we present some of the recent computational methodologies that have been proposed to identify and assess the association between inter- or intra-tumor heterogeneity with clinical variables.