# Cell lines in Non-Cancerous

**URL:** <https://forum.depmap.org/t/cell-lines-in-non-cancerous/2647>\
**Category:** Q&A\
**Created:** [June 25, 2023, 6:20pm UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/cell-lines-in-non-cancerous/2647 "2023-06-25T18:20:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Subasree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Subasree](https://forum.depmap.org/u/Subasree)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2023, 6:20pm UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/cell-lines-in-non-cancerous/2647/1 "2023-06-25T18:20:42Z")

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Hi everyone.  
There is a category of cell lines called as Cell lines in Non-Cancerous in the database. But they are termed as transformed cell lines. A few examples are OELE and HMEL. My question is that can these be used as a substitue for normal cell lines since we do not have information on nomal/control cell lines here?

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**Author:** ![pmontgom](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/forum.depmap.org/pmontgom/32/4_2.png) [@pmontgom](https://forum.depmap.org/u/pmontgom)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/cell-lines-in-non-cancerous/2647/2 "2023-06-26T13:48:33Z")

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I’m likely not the best person to answer this question, however, what I can say is when the topic of which lines we can use as a proxy for normals comes up, the question becomes “used for what?” No cell lines will ever be truly be “normal” because there will be alterations in order to get a line that can be passaged indefinitely, and they are grown in artificial environments. For some questions, these lines might be a good enough proxy, but for some questions, they will not.

However I can say, if one wants to make a comparison to normal tissue to evaluate general toxicity, we generally don’t look at individual lines, but instead often use the full panel of lines to assess whether a treatment is likely toxic to normal tissue.

For other questions, it might be useful to use one of these non-cancerous lines, but any comparisons will always have a fair number of caveats. I don’t think we fully understand in which ways they are identical to normal tissue and which ways they are different.

Thanks,  
Phil

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**Author:** ![Subasree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Subasree](https://forum.depmap.org/u/Subasree)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2023, 2:15pm UTC](https://forum.depmap.org/t/cell-lines-in-non-cancerous/2647/3 "2023-06-26T14:15:12Z")

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Ok. Thank you for the explanation.