Extended Data Fig. 1: The relationship between IC50 and frequency of persisters. | Nature Cancer

Extended Data Fig. 1: The relationship between IC50 and frequency of persisters.

From: IRS1 phosphorylation underlies the non-stochastic probability of cancer cells to persist during EGFR inhibition therapy

Extended Data Fig. 1

The graph presents hypothetical data to demonstrate one of the differences between IC50 and frequency of persisters: the different reference point that is used to calculate these measures. IC50 is calculated by comparing the number of cells that remain viable after treatment to the number of cells in the non-treated control. The IC50 thus represents the effect of the drug on both growth rate and cell death. As opposed to IC50, the frequency of persisters is measured by comparing the number of cells that remain viable after treatment to the number of cells that were present just before drug treatment was started. By doing so, we ignore the growth inhibition effect and focus on the cell death effect.

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