Abstract
Pathway-centric approaches have emerged as methods that can empower studies of inter-tumor heterogeneity. In addition, the data gathered by the Pan-Cancer initiative has created an unprecedented opportunity for illuminating common features across different cancer types. We combined across-cancer mutual exclusivity with interactions data to uncover pan-cancer dysregulated pathways. Our new method, Mutual Exclusivity Module Cover (MEMCover) not only identified previously known Pan-Cancer dysregulated subnetworks but also novel subnetworks whose across cancer role has not been appreciated well before. In addition, we demonstrate the existence of mutual exclusivity hubs, putatively corresponding to cancer drivers with strong growth advantages. Finally, we show that while mutually exclusive pairs within or across cancer types are predominantly functionally interacting, the pairs in between cancer mutual exclusivity class are more often disconnected in functional networks.