Identity crisis—Rigor and reproducibility in human cell lines
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The usage of contaminated or misidentified cells could cost the US over $28 billion per year.
“the usage of contaminated or misidentified cells could cost the US over $28 billion/year from which 36.1% are believed to be linked to biological reagents and reference materials [15,140].”
From Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review (2026) · cites this paper as [140]
In “Identity Crisis – rigor and reproducibility in human cell lines,” the paper estimates the US cost at as much as $20 billion per year, not over $28 billion per year. The cited passage therefore contradicts the claimed amount. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured36.1% of the cost of contaminated or misidentified cell usage is believed to be linked to biological reagents and reference materials.
“the usage of contaminated or misidentified cells could cost the US over $28 billion/year from which 36.1% are believed to be linked to biological reagents and reference materials [15,140].”
From Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review (2026) · cites this paper as [140]
The main text (page not provided) links contaminated or misidentified cell lines to substantial US costs, estimating as much as $20 billion per year. It does not report the claimed 36.1% share for biological reagents and reference materials, and its estimate does not support the citing sentence’s figure of over $28 billion per year. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
The economics of reproducibility in preclinical research
Freedman, L. P., Cockburn, I. M., & Simcoe, T. S. (2015) · PLOS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165 · Cited by 1,055 · 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 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Cross-contamination appears to occur shortly after cell line establishment, leading to hundreds of lines with no known authentic stock (5, 6).”
Cell line misidentification: the beginning of the end
American Type Culture Collection Standards Development Organization Workgroup ASN-0002 (2010) · Nature Reviews Cancer · doi:10.1038/nrc2852 · Cited by 266 · see citing works
Match criteria for human cell line authentication: Where do we draw the line?
Capes‐Davis, A., Reid, Y. A., Kline, M. C., Storts, D. R., Strauss, E., Dirks, W. G., Drexler, H. G., MacLeod, R. A. F., Sykes, G., Kohara, A., et al. (2013) · International Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1002/ijc.27931 · Cited by 189 · cited 2× · see citing works
“A minimum of 80% match has been recommended to discriminate between related and unrelated samples (12, 13).”
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 · cited 1× · see citing works
“It has been estimated that studies using contaminated or misidentified cells affects up to 10% of the literature (7), and could cost the U.”
Persistent use of “false” cell lines
Lacroix, M. (2008) · International Journal of Cancer · doi:10.1002/ijc.23233 · Cited by 151 · see citing works
Investigation of Cross-Contamination and Misidentification of 278 Widely Used Tumor Cell Lines
Huang, Y., Liu, Y., Zheng, C., & Shen, C. (2017) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0170384 · Cited by 105 · see citing works
Kniss, D. A., & Summerfield, T. L. (2014) · Reproductive Sciences · doi:10.1177/1933719114522518 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 9
- [4]Bian X, Yang Z, Feng H, Sun H, Liu Y. A Combination of Species Identification and STR Profiling Identifies Cross-contaminated Cells from 482 Human Tumor Cell Lines. Sci Rep. 2017; 7(1): 9774. 28851942 PMC5575032
- [5]MacLeod RA, Dirks WG, Matsuo Y, Kaufmann M, Milch H, Drexler HG. Widespread intraspecies cross-contamination of human tumor cell lines arising at source. Int J Cancer. 1999; 83(4): 555– 63. 10508494
- [9]Masters JR, Thomson JA, Daly-Burns B, Reid YA, Dirks WG, Packer P, Short tandem repeat profiling provides an international reference standard for human cell lines. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001; 98(14): 8012– 7. 11416159 PMC35459
- [10]Barallon R, Bauer SR, Butler J, Capes-Davis A, Dirks WG, Elmore E, Recommendation of short tandem repeat profiling for authenticating human cell lines, stem cells, and tissues. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol Anim. 2010; 46(9): 727– 32. 20614197 PMC2965362
- [13]Bady P, Diserens AC, Castella V, Kalt S, Heinimann K, Hamou MF, DNA fingerprinting of glioma cell lines and considerations on similarity measurements. Neuro Oncol. 2012; 14(6): 701– 11. 22570425 PMC3367844
- [14]Blow NS. Right cell, wrong cell. Biotechniques. 2011; 51(2): 75. 21806546
- [15]Potash J, Anderson KC. What’s Your Line? Clinical cancer research: an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. 2009; 15(13): 4251. 19549765
- [16]Identity crisis. Nature. 2009; 457(7232): 935– 6. 19225471
- [17]Lichter P, Allgayer H, Bartsch H, Fusenig N, Hemminki K, von Knebel Doeberitz M, Obligation for cell line authentication: appeal for concerted action. Int J Cancer. 2010; 126(1): 1.7. 19882693
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review
Weiskirchen, R. (2026) · Medical Sciences · doi:10.3390/medsci14010025 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
- Authors
- Eckers, J. C., Swick, A. D., & Kimple, R. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- ORCID
- Kimple, Randall J.
- Venue
- Radiation Research
- Publisher
- Radiation Research Society
- Published
- 2018-06
- Volume
- 189
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 551-552
- ISSN
- 0033-7587 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6209520
- OpenAlex
- W2796527601
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 0.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Radiation Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- BioOne Complete (BioOne) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Cancer Institute (P30CA014520)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (T32AI078985)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Viral Infectious Diseases and Gene Expression in Insects
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Effects of Radiation Exposure
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Pluripotent Stem Cells Research
- Keywords
- human cell lines, cell line authentication, rigor, reproducibility, cell line misidentification
- MeSH terms
- Cell Line, Humans, Laboratories, Microsatellite Repeats
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