Knudson

This package provides the data from Table 1 from Knudson (1971). This paper, entitled "Mutation and cancer: statistical study of retinoblastoma", provided the basis for the two-hit hypothesis of cancer.

The two-hit hypothesis states that cancer arises via mutation of tumor supressor genes (TSGs), of which there are generally two genetic copies. Some patients are born with a mutation in one of the two copies of a TSG, which predisposes them to cancer.

The vignette also serves as a reproducibility case study that attempts to recreate Figure 1 using the data in Table 1 from Knudson (1971) (see below).

• k: the data from Table 1 in this paper. This is a dataframe with 48 rows and 8 variables, described below:

  • case: the case number

  • hosp_numb: the hospital id number of the patient

  • sex: the sex of the patient

  • age_at_dx: the age (in months) of the patient at diagnosis

  • r_tum: the number of tumors in the right eye. * if unknown.

  • l_tum: the number of tumors in the left eye. * if unknown.

  • family_hx: Is there a family history of retinoblastoma? If so, lists who was affected.

  • side: Was the retinoblastoma unilateral (unilat) or bilateral (bilat)

Installation

## Install the development version of knudson from github
devtools::install_github("dpique/knudson",
    build_opts=c("--no-resave-data", "--no-manual"),
    build_vignettes=TRUE)

library(knudson)

## open the vignette
vignette("knudson")