Drug sensitivity in cancer cell lines is not tissue-specific

Cancer cell lines play key roles in the initial stages of drug discovery, facilitating the high-throughput screening of potential drugs. Here, 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.