Drexler Hans G, Dirks Wilhelm G, MacLeod Roderick A F, Uphoff Cord C
Department of Human and Animal Cell Lines, Leibniz-Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig, Germany.
Int J Cancer. 2017 Mar 1;140(5):1209-1214. doi: 10.1002/ijc.30530.
Leukemia-lymphoma cell lines are important research tools in a variety of fields. To represent adequate model systems it is of utmost importance that cell lines faithfully model the primary tumor material and are not cross-contaminated with unrelated cell material (or contaminated with mycoplasma). As it has been previously reported that cross-contaminated cell lines represent a significant problem, it is of interest to know whether any improvement in the prevalence of such "false cell lines" had occurred since we called the alert in 1999. A retrospective review of our data archives covered 848 cell lines received from 1990 to 2014 from 290 laboratories in 23 countries spanning the spectrum of leukemia-lymphoma entities. Two variables were considered: authenticity and freedom from mycoplasma infection. Regarding provenance, we separately considered primary sources (original investigators having established the cell lines or reference repositories) and secondary sources. The percentages of mycoplasma-contaminated cell lines decreased significantly over the 25-year timespan. Among primary sourced material: mycoplasma-contamination fell from 23% to 0%; among secondary sourced: from 48% to 21%. The corresponding figures for cross-contamination declined from 15% to 6%, while among material obtained from secondary sources prevalence remained remarkably high, throughout the time periods at 14-18%. Taken together, our data indicate that using non-authenticated cell lines from secondary sources carries a risk of about 1:6 for obtaining a false cell line. The use of authentic leukemia-lymphoma cell lines holds important translational value for their model character and the reproducibility of the laboratory data in the clinical arena.
白血病-淋巴瘤细胞系是多个领域重要的研究工具。为了构建合适的模型系统，至关重要的是细胞系要如实地模拟原发性肿瘤材料，且不能与无关的细胞材料交叉污染（或被支原体污染）。正如之前所报道的，交叉污染的细胞系是一个重大问题，因此了解自1999年我们发出警示以来，此类“假细胞系”的发生率是否有任何改善是很有意义的。对我们的数据档案进行回顾性审查，涵盖了1990年至2014年从23个国家的290个实验室收到的848个细胞系，这些细胞系涵盖了白血病-淋巴瘤实体的各个范围。考虑了两个变量：真实性和无支原体感染。关于来源，我们分别考虑了主要来源（建立细胞系的原始研究者或参考储存库）和次要来源。在25年的时间跨度内，支原体污染的细胞系百分比显著下降。在主要来源的材料中：支原体污染率从23%降至0%；在次要来源中：从48%降至21%。交叉污染的相应数字从15%降至6%，而在从次要来源获得的材料中，整个时间段内交叉污染率仍保持在14%-18%的较高水平。总体而言，我们的数据表明，使用来自次要来源的未经鉴定的细胞系获得假细胞系的风险约为1:6。使用真实的白血病-淋巴瘤细胞系因其模型特性以及临床领域实验室数据的可重复性而具有重要的转化价值。
