Fig. 3

Therapeutic screening for identifying the specific agents against EGFR-positive HCT116 and HT29 cells. (a) To identify an efficient agent inhibiting EGFR-positive CRCs, a panel containing 172 inhibitory agents was used. Each inhibitor in the panel was added to HCT116 and HT29 cells individually followed by 48 h of incubation. The detailed cell viabilities are presented in Additional file 7: Table S3. In total, 8 of the 172 compounds reduced both HCT116 and HT29 cells by < 60% in vitro, which are marked in red. (b) Moreover, the inhibitors reducing the cell viability of HCT116 and HT29 cells by 60% individually are listed, revealing that the number of agents inhibiting HT29 cells was more than that of agents inhibiting HCT116 cells; HCT116 is a KRAS-mutant strain and HT29 is KRAS-normal