Misidentified and contaminated cell lines lead to faulty cancer science

Misidentified and contaminated cell lines lead to faulty cancer science

AURORA, Colo. (June 20, 2012) -AURORA, COLO (June 20, 2012) -- Modern cancer therapies start in cells – researchers compare cancer samples to healthy cells to discover how cancer is genetically different, and use cell lines to test promising new drugs. However, a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Gynecologic Oncology shows that due to a high rate of contamination, misidentification and redundancy in widely available cell lines, researchers may be drawing faulty conclusions.

"I've seen faculty and graduate students leave my lab in tears when we discovered the cells on the label weren't the cells they were actually experimenting on," says Christopher Korch, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center and director of the center's DNA Sequencing and Analysis Service, the paper's co-first author. "When you get a cell line, you have to look that gift horse in the mouth – there's up to a 40 percent chance it's a Trojan horse, not what it says it is."

For example, the cell line known as HES has been widely used as a "normal" model of endometrial cells since its development in 1989. There are literally hundreds of papers that, for example, look for differences between endometrial cancer cells and these supposedly normal HES endometrial cells. Unfortunately, HES is not, in fact, an endometrial cell line. It's another cell line known as HeLa which was first derived from cervical cancer.
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"I see two people working with different cultures in the same hood, or using the same growth medium for the same cultures with the same pipette," Korch says. "And especially HeLa is superwoman – it can fly." HeLa cells can travel in aerosols and once they land where they shouldn't, they're so adaptive and aggressive that they tend to out compete other cell lines wherever they land – contamination leads to a quick HeLa takeover and perhaps a vial labeled HES when in fact it's HeLa.

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