National Cancer Institute 60 human tumor cell line panel (NCI-60) (NCI-60)

The National Cancer Institute 60 (NCI-60) tumor cell panel is a standardized collection of 60 human cancer cell lines used by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for in vitro drug screening and characterization (NCI, 2024). Established in the late 1980s, the panel represents nine distinct cancer types, including leukemia, melanoma, and cancers of the lung, colon, brain, ovary, breast, prostate, and kidney (Shoemaker, 2006). It is not a single molecular target, receptor, or enzyme, but rather a phenotypic screening platform designed to identify compounds with potential anticancer activity (NIH, 2023). By testing thousands of compounds across these diverse cell lines, researchers can generate 'fingerprints' of drug sensitivity that help infer mechanisms of action and identify potential molecular targets (PubMed, 2023). The NCI-60 has been extensively profiled at the genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels, providing a rich dataset for correlating drug response with molecular features (Wikipedia, 2024). This resource has been instrumental in the discovery of numerous chemotherapeutic agents and the development of the COMPARE algorithm for drug mechanism prediction (Nature Reviews Cancer, 2006). While it has been largely superseded by larger cell line panels in modern high-throughput screening, it remains a foundational tool in cancer pharmacology and systems biology (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2016).

Other names

NCI-60NCI-60 Human Tumor Cell Lines ScreenNCI-60 panelNCI-60 cell line panelNCI-60 screen

The NCI-60 panel is a phenotypic screening system rather than a molecular target; it is used to determine the mechanism of action of compounds by comparing their cytotoxicity profiles across 60 cell lines to a database of known agents using the COMPARE algorithm (Shoemaker, 2006).