Quality control for your research

Cell culture contaminations are a serious problem in biological research. Possible reasons are mostly mishandling of cells during routine culture and cryopreservation but also the lack of convenient tests for the quality control of cell cultures. The result is that 15-30 % of cell lines in current use are estimated to be contaminated or to not be what they are thought to be.

In principle, cell lines can be contaminated by a wide range of agents including i) bacteria, ii) viruses and iii) other cell lines. Frequent bacterial, viral and inter-species contaminations can be rapidly detected by Multiplexion´s Multiplex Cell Contamination Test. The patent for the underlying technology was granted in 2016 (WO 2009/109611). Contamination of one human cell line by another human cell line (intra-human contamination) and human cell line authentication is monitored by Multiplexion´s Multiplex Cell Line Authentication, which is based on Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) typing. For cell lines still not included in our SNP data base, classical Short Tandem Repeat (STR) profiling is offered.