Colorectal cancer cell lines

thumb|0x0px|Phase contrast [[micrograph of confluent Caco-2 cells]] Caco-2 (from Cancer coli, "colon cancer") is an immortalized cell line of human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells. It is primarily used as a model of the intestinal epithelial barrier. In culture, Caco-2 cells spontaneously differentiate into a heterogeneous mixture of intestinal epithelial cells. It was developed in 1977 by Jorgen Fogh at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.