Cell contamination leads to inaccurate data: we must take action now
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Cites
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Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Some research papers report results for lung cancer cells that turn out to be liver carcinoma, or human cell lines that turn out to be rat.
“some research papers report results for lung cancer cells that turn out to be liver carcinoma, or human cell lines that turn out to be rat [3, 4].”
From The ghosts of HeLa: How cell line misidentification contaminates the scientific literature (2017) · cites this paper as [3]
Cites
Cross-contamination of cells in culture
Nelson-Rees, W. A., Daniels, D. W., & Flandermeyer, R. R. (1981) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.6451928 · Cited by 329 · see citing works
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HeLa cells 50 years on: the good, the bad and the ugly
Masters, J. R. (2002) · Nature Reviews Cancer · doi:10.1038/nrc775 · Cited by 560 · see citing works
Check your cultures! A list of cross‐contaminated or misidentified cell lines
Capes‐Davis, A., Theodosopoulos, G., Atkin, I., Drexler, H. G., Kohara, A., MacLeod, R. A. F., Masters, J. R., Nakamura, Y., Reid, Y. A., Reddel, R. R., et al. (2010) · International Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1002/ijc.25242 · Cited by 520 · see citing works
Short tandem repeat profiling provides an international reference standard for human cell lines
Masters, J. R., Thomson, J. A., Daly-Burns, B., Reid, Y. A., Dirks, W. G., Packer, P., Toji, L. H., Ohno, T., Tanabe, H., Arlett, C. F., et al. (2001) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.121616198 · Cited by 478 · see citing works
The Costs of using Unauthenticated, Over-Passaged Cell Lines: How Much more Data do we Need?
Hughes, P., Marshall, D., Reid, Y., Parkes, H., & Gelber, C. (2007) · BioTechniques · doi:10.2144/000112598 · Cited by 434 · see citing works
Coecke, S., Balls, M., Bowe, G., Davis, J., Gstraunthaler, G., Hartung, T., Hay, R., Merten, O.-W., Price, A., Schechtman, L., et al. (2005) · Alternatives to Laboratory Animals · doi:10.1177/026119290503300313 · Cited by 371 · see citing works
Self-citationFalse leukemia–lymphoma cell lines: an update on over 500 cell lines
Drexler, H. G., Dirks, W. G., Matsuo, Y., & MacLeod, R. A. F. (2003) · Leukemia · doi:10.1038/sj.leu.2402799 · Cited by 202 · see citing works
The ghosts of HeLa: How cell line misidentification contaminates the scientific literature
Horbach, S. P. J. M., & Halffman, W. (2017) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186281 · Cited by 167 · see citing works
Standards for cell line authentication and beyond
Almeida, J. L., Cole, K. D., & Plant, A. L. (2016) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002476 · Cited by 154 · see citing works
Persistent use of “false” cell lines
Lacroix, M. (2008) · International Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1002/ijc.23233 · Cited by 151 · see citing works
Ye, F., Chen, C., Qin, J., Liu, J., & Zheng, C. (2015) · The FASEB Journal · doi:10.1096/fj.14-266718 · Cited by 144 · see citing works
Dirks, W. G., MacLeod, R. A. F., Nakamura, Y., Kohara, A., Reid, Y., Milch, H., Drexler, H. G., & Mizusawa, H. (2010) · International Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1002/ijc.24999 · Cited by 104 · see citing works
Quality of cell products: authenticity, identity, genomic stability and status of differentiation
Dittmar, K. E. J., Simann, M., Zghoul, N., Schön, O., Meyring, W., Hannig, H., Macke, L., Dirks, W. G., Miller, K., Garritsen, H. S. P., et al. (2010) · Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy · doi:10.1159/000284401 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
Korch, C. T., & Capes-Davis, A. (2021) · SLAS Discovery · doi:10.1177/24725552211051963 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Cytogenetic Characterization of Tumor Cell Lines
MacLeod, R. A. F., & Drexler, H. G. (2003) · Cancer Cell Culture · doi:10.1385/1-59259-406-9:57 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
The history, landscape, and outlook of human cell line authentication and security
Harbut, E., Makris, Y., Pertsemlidis, A., & Bleris, L. (2024) · SLAS Discovery · doi:10.1016/j.slasd.2024.100194 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Stacey, G. N.
- Affiliations
- National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Stacey, G. N.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2000-01-27
- Volume
- 403
- Issue
- 6768
- Pages
- 356-356
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1645718131
- Cited by
- 125
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 5
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Viral Infectious Diseases and Gene Expression in Insects
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Clinical Laboratory Practices and Quality Control
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal testing and alternatives
- Keywords
- cell culture contamination, cell line authentication, cancer cell lines, biological products
- MeSH terms
- Cell Line, HeLa Cells, Humans, Biological Specimen Banks, Cell Culture Techniques
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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