Short Tandem Repeat (STR) Profiling Is Essential

Why it’s important

When researchers use misidentified cell lines in experiments, the research is inevitably flawed and not reproducible. More concerning, new products developed may not be safe. Cell authentication is required by the National Institutes of Health for grant funding and by a number of scientific journals prior to publication. Moreover, the Food and Drug Administration requires validation of all materials included in investigational new drug applications.

When should you test your cell lines?

• When you receive a new cell line into your laboratory
• After 10 passages
• After preparing a cell bank
• When in doubt

What's the solution?

Verify the authenticity of your cells at all phases of your research. Don't wait until you are far into development of a novel therapeutic to test your cell lines. STR analysis helps ensure the quality and integrity of human cell lines in the scientific community. STR markers enable researchers to uniquely identify cell lines, show relatedness between cell lines, and compare profiles—use of the 8 core loci enables a 1 x 10⁸ discrimination rate for unrelated individuals.

Our human cell line authentication service, utilizing short tandem repeat (STR) profiling makes cell authentication easy. ATCC FTA Sample Collection Kit for Human Cell Authentication Service. We offer single kits, sets of 10, or sets of 20 kits including detailed spotting instructions and a mail-in envelope to send us your sample(s). Our service will identify STR markers at specific loci to establish a DNA fingerprint of human cell lines and amplify 17 STR loci plus Amelogenin. We then run the STR profile of your cell sample against all the baseline STR profiles in the ATCC STR profile database.