Why does Australia need a cell bank?
Cell banks act as repositories for cell cultures, and often other material, developed by the research community worldwide (see What We Do for further explanations). Researchers deposit their cells in these repositories because they know that cultures will be handled and stored appropriately, with meticulous quality control, and then will be preserved and made available to others. The quality control performed by cell banks is particularly effective in eliminating culture contamination, either by micro-organisms such as Mycoplasma or by other cell lines. Although contamination is now a widely accepted risk of cell culture, recent publications in the scientific literature show that it remains a widespread problem.
Until the present time, Australian researchers have accessed cell banks overseas. The need to import cells from such distant sources has made this a time-consuming and tedious process. CellBank Australia was developed with an aim to make this process easier for local scientists. The presence of a local cell bank will also encourage researchers in this region to deposit their cell lines and thus to make an important and unique collection available for others.
Storage and distribution of these cell lines is essentially a community service. CellBank Australia operates as a not-for-profit facility and aims primarily to recover costs from cell line sales. |