# Cell lines as a proxy for patients

Source: https://onco.cc/terms/cell-lines-as-proxy/  
OnCo record `cell-lines-as-proxy` (Term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Cancer cell lines are tumour cells grown indefinitely in the laboratory; they are convenient for drug testing but only imperfectly stand in for a patient's tumour.

## Summary

An immortalised cell line is a population of cells that has evaded normal senescence and can be grown for prolonged periods in vitro (Wikipedia). The Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia and similar panels pair molecular profiles of about a thousand lines with drug screens, which is where most drug-response models are trained. Lines lack a microenvironment, immune system and drug pharmacokinetics, and drift in culture, so transfer from cell line to patient is a separate, harder problem.

## Fields

- Kind: Term
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Also known as: cell lines as a patient proxy; cancer cell lines; immortalised cell line; immortalized cell line; cell line model
- Tags: cansim-terms

## Notes

- Listed in the CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme; CanSim page path /terms/cell-lines-as-patient-proxy.

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortalised_cell_line
- Barretina et al., The Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (Nature 2012): https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11003
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortalised_cell_line

## Connected records

- collections: [DepMap (Cancer Dependency Map)](https://onco.cc/collections/depmap/)
- terms: [Cancer AI vocabulary (CanSim terms map)](https://onco.cc/terms/cancer-ai-vocabulary/), [Domain shift and domain adaptation (cell line to patient)](https://onco.cc/terms/domain-adaptation/), [Drug response and drug sensitivity (IC50, AUC)](https://onco.cc/terms/drug-response-sensitivity/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/cell-lines-as-proxy.json