Health Protection Agency Culture Collection

Cross-Contaminated & Misidentified Cell Lines

The ECACC has published on its webpage various informations concerning cross-contaminated or mis-identified cell lines, how these cell lines can be tested for authencity etc. For the original postings and further information, please follow the following link.

http://www.hpacultures.org.uk/services/celllineidentityverification/misidentifiedcelllines.jsp


For informations on cross-contamination between cell lines found in the literature please read the two articles below. According to the ECACC survey of the scientific literature up to 20% of published work based on the use of human cell lines specifiec lines are suggested or known to be mis-identified1,2. This is not a small number. Therefore everybody who is working with cell lines should look into this matter.


1. MacLeod et al., (1999) Widespread intraspecies cross-contamination of human tumor cell lines arising at source. Int J Cancer 83(4) 555-563 (Cell line: ECV304)
2. Drexler HG et al. (2003) False leukemia-lymphoma cell lines: an update on over 500 cell lines. Leukemia, 17(2):416-426.