A deeply reported story on cell line contamination in cancer research. Across all fields of cancer research, up to a third of cell lines have been identified as imposoters–contaminated and overtaken by other cell lines, and thus unfit for research. There are about 10,000 citations every year on false lines. The problem hjas been known for over half a century, yet most scientists today still don’t bother to test their lines, to see if they are valid. This is in spite of the fact that testing is now cheap and reliable. Cell lines are fundamental for cancer research, to understand how certain cancers develop, what mutations are involved, and what drugs might treat them. There is no cancer drug in current use that wasn’t first tested in a cell line. I go into the detailed story of what happened in the thyroid field, where 17 of 40 widely used lines were discovered to be false; how a normal endometrial cell line turned out to be breast cancer, and more. The importance of this piece is that scientists are NOT validating their lines, and the NIH is NOT requiring it for grants.
