The Exomes of the NCI-60 Panel: A Genomic Resource for Cancer Biology and Systems Pharmacology

Abstract

The NCI-60 cell lines are the most frequently studied human tumor cell lines in cancer research. This panel has generated the most extensive cancer pharmacology database worldwide. In addition, these cell lines have been intensely investigated, providing a unique platform for hypothesis-driven research focused on enhancing our understanding of tumor biology. Here, we report a comprehensive analysis of coding variants in the NCI-60 panel of cell lines identified by whole exome sequencing, providing a list of possible cancer specific variants for the community. Furthermore, we identify pharmacogenomic correlations between specific variants in genes such as TP53, BRAF, ERBBs, and ATAD5 and anticancer agents such as nutlin, vemurafenib, erlotinib, and bleomycin showing one of many ways the data could be used to validate and generate novel hypotheses for further investigation. As new cancer genes are identified through large-scale sequencing studies, the data presented here for the NCI-60 will be an invaluable resource for identifying cell lines with mutations in such genes for hypothesis-driven research. To enhance the utility of the data for the greater research community, the genomic variants are freely available in different formats and from multiple sources including the CellMiner and Ingenuity websites.