CliPP

Clonal Structure Identification through Pairwise Penalization

Description

Last updated · May 7, 2026

Tumor subclonal architecture shapes cancer evolution, yet subclonal reconstruction from bulk sequencing remains difficult to scale due to computational cost and model complexity. We developed Clonal Structure Identification through Pairwise Penalization (CliPP) , a penalized-likelihood framework that jointly estimates cellular prevalence with pairwise fusion penalties, automatically identifying subclones without requiring extensive priors, which enables fast and accurate subclonal reconstruction.

Using CliPP on Web, users may upload their own samples for fast subclonal reconstruction using our easy to navigate user interface. We also present the subclonal reconstruction results for 2,675 TCGA samples and 1,312 PCAWG samples.

Issue contacts

AW
Aaron Wu
Web application · Engineering
pandachessaaron@gmail.com
MM
Matthew Montierth
Pipeline support · MD Anderson
MDMontierth@mdanderson.org

How CliPP works

Pipeline overview
1
Input
WGS / WES variant calls with read depth, allele counts, and copy-number segments.
2
Penalized model
Regularized likelihood clusters mutations by penalizing pairwise CCF differences.
3
Subclonal reconstruction
Recovers clonal & subclonal populations in minutes per sample.
4
Output
Subclonal mutation fraction (sMF), clonal structure, cluster assignments.

Citation

PRE-PRINT · BIORXIV

Jiang, Y., Montierth, M.D., Ding, Y., Yu, K., Tran, Q., Wu, A., Li, R., Ji, S., Liu, X., Shin, S.J., Cao, S., Tang, Y., Lesluyes, T., Kimmel, M., Wang, J.R., Tarabichi, M., Zhu, H., Van Loo, P., & Wang, W. Scalable subclonal reconstruction of cancer cells in DNA sequencing data using a penalized likelihood model. bioRxiv (2021).

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.31.437383v2
BIBTEX
@article{jiang2021clipp,
  title   = {Scalable subclonal reconstruction of cancer cells in DNA sequencing data using a penalized likelihood model},
  author  = {Jiang, Yujie and Montierth, Matthew D and Ding, Y and Yu, Kaixian and Tran, Quang and Wu, Aaron and Li, Ruonan and Ji, Shuangxi and Liu, Xiaoqian and Shin, Seung Jun and Cao, Shaolong and Tang, Yuxin and Lesluyes, Tom and Kimmel, Marek and Wang, Jennifer R and Tarabichi, Maxime and Zhu, Hongtu and Van Loo, Peter and Wang, Wenyi},
  journal = {bioRxiv},
  year    = {2021},
  doi     = {10.1101/2021.03.31.437383}
}

Data Usage

If you use this data in your research, please cite:

1
CliPP methodology and software publication
2
PCAWG Consortium publications for PCAWG data
3
TCGA Research Network publications for TCGA data
DATA USAGE

All data is provided for research purposes. Please follow the data usage policies of the respective consortiums.

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Explore subclonal reconstruction results from 2,675 TCGA samples and 1,312 PCAWG samples. For each sample, we provide a visualization of subclonal reconstruction results and subclonal mutation fraction (sMF) calculation. Samples included in our data exploration all passed our filtering criteria, having more than 20 and less than 20,000 SNVs, and number of reads per chromosomal copy (nrpcc) value greater than 10. Additional sample filtering was performed based on quality control of copy number calls. For more details please see our pre-print . To download the full datasets, visit the Downloads page .

Explore driver mutation annotation for mutations in 289 genes across 2,172 TCGA samples from 28 cancer types. Driver mutation lists were obtained from IntOGen (Martínez-Jiménez et al., Nature Reviews Cancer , 2020).

CP Distribution

VAF Distribution

Simulation dataset · CliPPSim4k
Simulated cancer genomic data for testing and validation
SAMPLE COUNT
4,050
GROUND TRUTH
Yes
LAST UPDATED
2025-09-12
DATASET DESCRIPTION TYPE SIZE ACTION
CliPPSim4k Input Data Per-sample SNV, CNA, and purity input files for 4,050 simulated samples ZIP 4.2 GB Download ZIP
CliPPSim4k Results CliPP subclonal reconstruction output for 4,050 simulated samples ZIP 45 MB Download ZIP
TCGA · The Cancer Genome Atlas
Multi-platform genomic data processed through the CliPP pipeline
TUMORS
5,192
CANCER TYPES
29
FORMAT
TSV
LAST UPDATED
2026-02-08
DATASET DESCRIPTION TYPE SIZE ACTION
Per-sample CliPP results Individual clonal structure outputs - zip archive ZIP 372 MB Download ZIP
Download by cancer type
Raw assignments
PCAWG · Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes
Whole-genome sequencing data with full subclonal reconstruction
TUMORS
1,816
CANCER TYPES
39
FORMAT
TSV · VCF
LAST UPDATED
2025-12-04
DATASET DESCRIPTION TYPE SIZE ACTION
Per-sample CliPP outputs Cluster assignments and CCF estimates for every PCAWG tumor ZIP 2.8 GB Download ZIP
Download by cancer type
Raw assignments
Driver Mutations · TCGA
Candidate driver mutations annotated with clonality status across TCGA tumors
MUTATIONS
13,538
SAMPLES
4,196
CANCER TYPES
28
FORMAT
CSV
DATASET DESCRIPTION TYPE SIZE ACTION
Driver mutation data Driver mutations with VAF, CP, clonality, and clinical annotations for all TCGA samples CSV ~12 MB Download
Download by cancer type
Download

Access issues?

If you encounter problems with downloads, contact pandachessaaron@gmail.com or MDMontierth@mdanderson.org .