Exploration of CCLE Data

by Katherine Olson

Cancer cell lines are an important tool in oncological research because they are used to study the biology of cancer and are used to test cancer treatments. Cancer cell lines are derived from cancer cells from tumor samples, and they are stored in a laboratory where they keep dividing and growing over time.

This summer, I worked with data from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE), a database of molecular measurements from over 900 different cancer cell lines derived from a variety of tissue types. My goal was to see if the cancer cell lines would cluster according to their tissue type by using their gene expression values.