# Prove your cell lines are what you say they are, or the paper is not published

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-cell-line-authentication-mandate/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-cell-line-authentication-mandate` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A large share of cancer research has been done on cells that were mislabelled or contaminated. A cheap DNA fingerprint test can prove identity; journals and funders should require it.

## Summary

Cross-contaminated and misidentified cell lines (the ICLAC register lists over 500) continue to be used in thousands of papers. Short tandem repeat profiling costs under a hundred dollars per line. Some journals and NIH recommend authentication; few enforce it. A mandate that every paper and grant using cell lines deposits a recent STR profile matched to Cellosaurus, with funders covering the cost, would close a known, fixable source of irreproducibility.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Enforcement at ten major journals and two funders reduces the share of new oncology papers using known misidentified lines from the several percent found in audits to under 0.5% within three years.
- Rationale: The problem is fully characterised, the test is cheap and standardised (ANSI/ATCC ASN-0002), and enforcement is the only missing element.
- Proposed test: Adopt the mandate at participating journals; audit a random sample of published papers annually for compliance and for use of misidentified lines.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: policy

## Sources

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

## Connected records

- collections: [Cancer Models (PDCM Finder) & HCMI](https://onco.cc/collections/cancer-models/)
- ideas: [A digital passport for every cell culture: identity, contamination status, passage number](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-cell-line-passport/)
- 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/)

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