CBN2Path: an R/Bioconductor package for the analysis of cancer progression pathways using Conjunctive Bayesian Networks

<ns7:p>Conjunctive Bayesian Networks (CBN) are probabilistic graphical models used to describe mutation accumulation processes such as tumorigenesis. Several CBN models exist, which have enabled the analysis and modeling of cancer progression pathways using cross-sectional genomic data. However, these models are implemented in different languages with heterogeneous input and output formats. Moreover, the recent developments towards robust inference of cancer progression pathways (i.e., the R-CBN and B-CBN models), highlight the need for departure from the maximum-likelihood-based frameworks (i.e., the CT-CBN and H-CBN models), which requires substantial implementational adjustments. Thus, we introduce the CBN2Path R/Bioconductor package that not only provides a unifying interface to accommodate all CBN models, but it also offers the necessary functionalities to facilitate robust inference, analysis and visualization of cancer progression pathways.</ns7:p>