# Every drug screen includes standard reference compounds whose performance is published

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-reference-compound-panels/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-reference-compound-panels` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Drug sensitivity results for the same cell line and drug differ substantially between large screens. Every published cancer drug screen should include a defined panel of reference compounds with published expected activity ranges per reference cell line, reported in a standard format, so results from different labs can be calibrated against each other.

## Summary

Drug sensitivity results for the same cell line and drug differ substantially between large screens (the CCLE versus GDSC discordance). A defined panel of reference compounds (with expected potency ranges per reference cell line) included in every published screen, and reported in a standard format, would allow cross-study calibration and reveal systematic differences in assay conditions.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Including reference panels will let discordant screens be reconciled by calibration, reducing cross-study potency disagreement by at least half for the drugs and lines covered.
- Rationale: Clinical laboratories use internal standards in every run; preclinical pharmacology mostly does not, and the resulting variance has been quantified.
- Proposed test: Define the panel; run it in five laboratories under their standard conditions; test whether calibration reconciles their results on a shared set of new compounds.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: research

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Preclinical results do not reproduce): Errington et al., Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology (eLife 2021): https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71601

## Connected records

- collections: [DepMap (Cancer Dependency Map)](https://onco.cc/collections/depmap/)
- ideas: [A digital passport for every cell culture: identity, contamination status, passage number](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-cell-line-passport/), [Shared reference organoid and PDX panels that every lab can test against](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-reference-model-panels/)
- technologies: [CRISPR functional genomics](https://onco.cc/technologies/crispr-screens/), [Functional (ex vivo) drug testing](https://onco.cc/technologies/functional-drug-testing/)
- bottlenecks: [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/)

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