Rapid, Simple and Cost-Effective Detection of Human Cell Line Contamination

Summary Cell line contamination and misidentification have dramatic repercussions in the field biomedical researchlargely contributing to the growing concerns about irreproducible results and posing a significant burden on the global biomedical research budgetWhile the general awareness about these issues has raised over the last yearscurrent authentication technologies such as short tandem repeatSTRprofiling are often labor intensiveslowcostly and not suited for cancer cell lineswhich make it very difficult to reliably and continuously monitor human cell culturesProfiling single nucleotide polymorphismsSNPswould provide a good alternative to STR for monitoring cancer cell culturesSNPs being less affected by genomic instabilities than STR markersNuProbe s blocker displacement amplificationBDAtechnology uniquely enables multiplexed rare allele enrichment by PCRBuilding upon NuProbe s BDA technologywe propose to develop a series of highly multiplexed and highly sensitive qPCR based SNP profiling assays to detect intra species cross contaminants present in human cell cultures at low levelsdown toWe anticipate these assays to translate into rapidcost effectivereliableand easy to use cell line contamination detection kits compatible with commonly available qPCR instruments Narrative The goal of the project is to develop new kits for detecting low levels of cross contaminations in human cell cultures and prevent contamination from leading to irreproducible research results or incorrect scientific conclusionsCurrent technologies are often labor intensiveslowcostlyand or not suited for cancer cell linesBuilding upon NuProbe s proprietary technologywe propose to develop rapidcost effectivereliableand easy to use cell line contamination detection kits that will be compatible with commonly used laboratory instruments