TOPS: a versatile software tool for statistical analysis and visualization of combinatorial gene-gene and gene-drug interaction screens.

Background: Measuring the impact of combinations of genetic or chemical perturbations on cellular fitness, sometimes referred to as synthetic lethal screening, is a powerful method for obtaining novel insights into gene function and drug action. Especially when performed at large scales, gene-gene or gene-drug interaction screens can reveal complex genetic interactions or drug mechanism of action or even identify novel therapeutics for the treatment of diseases.The result of such large-scale screen results can be represented as a matrix with a numeric score indicating the cellular fitness (e.

A chemical-genetic screen reveals a mechanism of resistance to PI3K inhibitors in cancer.

Linking the molecular aberrations of cancer to drug responses could guide treatment choice and identify new therapeutic applications. However, there has been no systematic approach for analyzing gene-drug interactions in human cells. Here we establish a multiplexed assay to study the cellular fitness of a panel of engineered isogenic cancer cells in response to a collection of drugs, enabling the systematic analysis of thousands of gene-drug interactions.