title: Drug sensitivity in cancer cell lines is not tissue-specific.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cancer cell lines have a prominent role in the initial stages of drug discovery, facilitating high-throughput screening of potential drugs. However, their clinical relevance remains controversial.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We assess whether drug sensitivity in cancer cell lines is able to discriminate tissue specificity. We find that cancer-specific drugs do not show higher efficacies in cell lines representing the respective tissues. Even when considering distinct cancer subtypes and targeted therapies, most drugs are evenly effective/ineffective throughout all cell lines.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  To get the most out of cell line panels, it will be necessary to look into their molecular characteristics, and integrate them into systems biology frameworks.
authors.affiliation: Joint IRB-BSC-CRG Program in Computational Biology, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), c/Baldiri i Reixac 10-12, Barcelona, 08028, Catalonia, Spain. samira.jaeger@irbbarcelona.org.
authors.forename: Samira
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jaeger
authors.affiliation: Joint IRB-BSC-CRG Program in Computational Biology, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), c/Baldiri i Reixac 10-12, Barcelona, 08028, Catalonia, Spain. miquel.duran@irbbarcelona.org.
authors.forename: Miquel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Duran-Frigola
authors.affiliation: Joint IRB-BSC-CRG Program in Computational Biology, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), c/Baldiri i Reixac 10-12, Barcelona, 08028, Catalonia, Spain. patrick.aloy@irbbarcelona.org.|Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Pg. Lluís Companys 23, Barcelona, 08010, Catalonia, Spain. patrick.aloy@irbbarcelona.org.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Aloy
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D019008:Drug Resistance, Neoplasm; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D009928:Organ Specificity
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents