DriverSubNet: A Novel Algorithm for Identifying Cancer Driver Genes by Subnetwork Enrichment Analysis

Identification of driver genes from mass non-functional passenger genes in cancers is still a critical challenge. Here, an effective and no parameter algorithm, named DriverSubNet, is presented for detecting driver genes by effectively mining the mutation and gene expression information based on subnetwork enrichment analysis. Compared with the existing classic methods, DriverSubNet can rank driver genes and filter out passenger genes more efficiently in terms of precision, recall, and F1 score, as indicated by the analysis of four cancer datasets. The method recovered about 50% more known cancer driver genes in the top 100 detected genes than those found in other algorithms. Intriguingly, DriverSubNet was able to find these unknown cancer driver genes which could act as potential therapeutic targets and useful prognostic biomarkers for cancer patients. Therefore, DriverSubNet may act as a useful tool for the identification of driver genes by subnetwork enrichment analysis.