Collin J. Tokheim, a doctoral student in the lab of ICM core faculty member Rachel Karchin, is the lead author of a paper titled, “Evaluating the evaluation of cancer driver genes,” which was published December 13, 2016 in the Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rachel Karchin, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and William R. Brody Faculty Scholar, was the senior author of the journal article.

Tokheim and his colleagues were able to develop a machine-learning-based method for driver gene prediction and a framework for evaluating and comparing other prediction methods. For the study, this evaluation tool was applied to eight existing cancer driver gene prediction methods.

“Our conclusion,” Tokheim said, “is that these methods still need to get better. We’re sharing our methodology publicly, and it should help others to improve their systems for identifying cancer driver genes.”

Tokheim and Karchin were recently featured in The Hub and The Baltimore Sun for their research on cancer driver genes.