Genetic Insights into the Economic Toll of Cell Line Misidentification: A Comprehensive Review.

ABSTRACT: Cell line misidentification, first exposed when HeLa cells were shown to contaminate dozens of "unique" cultures, now compromises roughly one in five lines and renders thousands of papers potentially unreliable, propagating unreliable data through hundreds of thousands of citations. The financial fallout is vast with irreproducible research linked to faulty cell stocks costing the United States an estimated $28 billion each year. Today, authentication is rapid, cheap and highly accurate. Modern 24-plex short tandem repeat (STR) kits, analyzed by six-dye capillary electrophoresis and benchmarked against public databases, verify a culture in half a day for less than €40, lowering the probability of mistaken identity to less than 10-15. Complementary SNP panels, low-pass genome sequencing, di

SUBMITTER: Weiskirchen R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12821653 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature