# Prove the cell line is what you say it is, or the paper does not run

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio1-model-authentication-mandate/  
OnCo record `idea-bio1-model-authentication-mandate` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A troubling share of published cancer experiments use cell lines that are contaminated or mislabelled. Requiring a simple identity check before publication would stop this.

## Summary

Short tandem repeat profiling costs little and detects misidentification and cross-contamination, yet compliance is patchy. Mandatory deposition of STR profiles (and, for patient-derived models, low-pass sequencing confirming donor identity and drift) at submission, checked automatically against the register of misidentified lines, would remove a known and fully solvable source of irreproducibility. Some journals already require it; enforcement is inconsistent.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Mandatory automated authentication checking at submission reduces the proportion of published oncology papers using misidentified lines to under 1 percent within three years.
- Rationale: Cell-line misidentification is one of the few reproducibility problems with a cheap, definitive test and an existing reference database; the failure is purely one of enforcement.
- Proposed test: Two major journals implement automated checking for one year; measure rejection or correction rate and compare with matched journals that do not.
- Maturity: preclinical-evidence
- Actor: policy

## Sources

- ICLAC register of misidentified cell lines: https://iclac.org/databases/cross-contaminations/

## Connected records

- bottlenecks: [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/idea-bio1-model-authentication-mandate.json