Enhanced Cancer Subtyping via Pan-Transcriptomics Data Fusion, Monte-Carlo Consensus Clustering, and Auto Classifier Creation

Subtyping of tumor transcriptome expression profiles is a routine method used to distinguish tumor heterogeneity. Unsupervised clustering techniques are often combined with survival analysis to decipher the relationship between genes and the survival times of patients. However, the reproducibility of these subtyping based studies is poor. There are multiple reports which have conflicting subtype and gene-survival time relationship results. In this study, we introduce the issues underlying the lack of reproducibility in transcriptomic subtyping studies. This problem arises from the routine analysis of small cohorts (