medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.01.21261447; this version posted August 5, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license . Novel Driver Strength Index highlights important cancer genes in TCGA PanCanAtlas patients Aleksey V. Belikov*, Danila V. Otnyukov, Alexey D. Vyatkin and Sergey V. Leonov Laboratory of Innovative Medicine, School of Biological and Medical Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141701 Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia *Corresponding author:
[email protected] NOTE: This preprint reports new research that has not been certified by peer review and should not be used to guide clinical practice. 1 medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.01.21261447; this version posted August 5, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license . Abstract Elucidating crucial driver genes is paramount for understanding the cancer origins and mechanisms of progression, as well as selecting targets for molecular therapy. Cancer genes are usually ranked by the frequency of mutation, which, however, does not necessarily reflect their driver strength. Here we hypothesize that driver strength is higher for genes that are preferentially mutated in patients with few driver mutations overall, because these few mutations should be strong enough to initiate cancer.