Date added: 24/02/2016 Top Story: Enhancing and Accelerating Research

 

Fast Facts

 

Enhancing and Accelerating Research

 

In 2014, CellBank Australia was included in the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) list of facilities and networks that health and medical researchers may choose to use as a resource to enhance and accelerate their research.

 

The NHMRC list, whilst not exhaustive, provides a significant description of facilities and networks aimed at supporting the Australian research effort. NHMRC funding may be used to pay for such services if it can be demonstrated that the service is a direct cost required to achieve the goals of a NHMRC-funded research project.

 

Applicants should consult with relevant services to obtain actual costings to be included with their NHMRC grant application.

 

To access the NHMRC list of facilities and networks, click here.

 

To access cell line pricing information on our online shop, you will first need to take a minute to register and create a profile (click here). For information on all other CellBank Australia services, click here to jump down the page.

 

Good Cell Culture Practice

 

Embarrassment Aside: A Lesson for Cell Biologists

 

Researchers have discovered that a human corneal epithelial cell (HCEC) line remains viable in growth media in the laboratory refrigerator without gaseous exchange for more than 3 weeks at 2°C and that this was the most likely mode in which their primary human corneal epithelia became contaminated. Their Letter, titled "Contamination of Primary Human Corneal Epithelial Cells With an SV40-Transformed Human Corneal Epithelial Cell Line: A Lesson for Cell Biologists in Good Laboratory Practice," was published in the February 2016 issue of the journal, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS).

 

Here the authors explain that they've put aside their embarrassment and told their story in the hope that "it will serve a valuable lesson and reminder for ocular and nonocular researchers performing cell culture about the risks of contamination and therefore the importance of authenticating cells prior to publication."

 

To read the Letter, click here.

 

Will the Cancer Moonshot Take-off Without Authenticated Cells?

 

Dr Leonard Freedman, president of the Global Biological Standards Institute (GBSI) has commented in a 16 February 2016 Laboratory Equipment blog post that the importance of research reproducibility will now be put under "an even higher resolution microscope," following the US President's State of the Union announcement of the cancer "Moonshot," and that "it won't take-off without authenticated cells."

 

To read the post, click here.

 

Cell Line Misidentification: An Eminently Solvable Problem

 

In a guest post on the Retraction Watch blog, Dr Freedman of the GBSI has also said that: "Understanding the existing barriers that prevent implementation of universal cell authentication is central to changing this sad state of affairs. Part cultural, part financial, part 'I have too many other things to deal with,' changing the mind-set of bench scientists as to the importance of cell authentication will go a long way toward solving an eminently solvable problem."

 

Dr Freedman’s comments were made as part of a two part series on the havoc misidentified cell lines can wreak on research. The first guest post was by Dr Amanda Capes-Davis, chair of the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC), talking about the lessons to be learned from ICLAC’s database of misidentified cell lines.

 

To read Dr Capes-Davis’ 2015 Retraction Watch post, click here. To read Dr Freedman's Retraction Watch post, click here.

 

Cell-based Research

 

US National Cancer Institute Repository of Patient-Derived Models

 

The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) is developing a national repository of patient-derived xenografts and in vitro patient-derived cell cultures.

 

To read a 17 February 2016 Nature News article written by Heidi Ledford about the new repository, click here.

 

Vascular Injury Research

 

Confluent primary human endothelial cells have been used by researchers to investigate whether conventional iron treatments may provoke acute vascular injury.

 

To read the 11 February 2016 PLOS One article, click here.

 

To read a 15 February 2016 Daily Mail article written by Madlen Davies and Colin Fernandez, click here.

 

Potential Therapeutic Agent for the Treatment of Oral Cancer

 

For the first time, researchers have shown the dose-dependent effect of p1932 on the modulation of cytosolic calcium release promoted by progesterone in a human squamous cell tongue carcinoma cell line. Their article, titled "Antagonistic Effect of a Salivary Proline-Rich Peptide on the Cytosolic Ca2+ Mobilization Induced by Progesterone in Oral Squamous Cancer Cells," was published in the journal, PLOS One, on 27 January 2016. The cell line used in the study (PE/CA-PJ15) was obtained from the European Collection of Authenticated Cell Cultures (ECACC; Porton Down, Salisbury, UK).

 

To read the article, click here.

 

How CellBank Australia can Help

 

CellBank Australia is a not-for-profit cell line repository.

 

Cell Authentication Testing

 

CellBank Australia offers a cell authentication testing service. For human cell lines, we use Short Tandem Repeat (STR) profiling to examine the number of tetranucleotide repeats at various loci to differentiate cell lines from different donors. A bulk testing discount of 25% is available for 8 or more samples.

 

For more information, click here.

 
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