Redefining the Relevance of Established Cancer Cell Lines to the Study of Clinical Anti-Cancer Drug Resistance

Although in vitro models have been a cornerstone of anti-cancer drug development, their direct applicability to clinical cancer research has actually been uncertain. Using a state-of-the-art Taqman-based qRT-PCR assay, we investigated the multidrug resistance (MDR) transcriptome of six cancer types, in both in vitro and in vivo samples. We studied 380 MDR genes, selected a priori based on an extensive curation of the literature published during the last three decades, in established cancer cell lines and clinical samples, either containing greater than 75% tumor cells or microdissected.