TPM, FPKM, or Normalized Counts? A Comparative Study of Quantification Measures for the Analysis of RNA-seq Data from the NCI Patient-Derived Models Repository.

We provided compelling evidence for a preferred quantification measure to conduct downstream analyses of PDX RNA-seq data. To our knowledge, this is the first comparative study of RNA-seq data quantification measures conducted on PDX models, which are known to be inherently more variable than cell line models. Our findings are consistent with what others have shown for human tumors and cell lines and add further support to the thesis that normalized counts are the best choice for the analysis of RNA-seq data across samples.