Cancer research is a top priority for so many people, either with the disease or supporting the charities by sponsorship.  So after all the effort the ordinary person in the street has put in to raise cash they would be upset to find this money wasted.

A recent investigation by the BBC has discovered that years of studies and the money to support it has been wasted by poor laboratory procedure, incorrectly identified cell tissue and cross contamination of cell lines.  In fact labs failed to do basic and inexpensive tests on the cell tissue they were to work on.  It has been uncovered that incorrectly identified cell tissue or contaminated tissue was being used for research into certain types of cancer therefore voiding any results.  Some of these studies continued for many years even though technicians found out during their work that they were working on the wrong tissue for studies.

Cross contamination of cell lines due to poor laboratory procedures allowed cells from other tissue to become mixed.  This may be due to failure to clean pipettes and culture plates properly.

Incorrect cell lines - Thousands of cell lines (tissue samples) are given identities and the information as to their origin are held by various universities, hospitals and private companies all over the world.  Researchers request or buy certain samples of cell lines to further their studies.

For example if a researcher requests a cell line from breast cancer tissue he would assume that that is what he studying.  But it has come to light that some of these cell lines are either incorrectly identified or have contaminated by other cell lines.  Obviously, any studies on this breast tissue would be invalid if the cell lines were ovarian or cross contaminated with the latter.

Researcher Dr Chris Tselepis worked with an international team which has found that TE7, an experimental culture of cancer cells used in labs for the past 20 years, was the wrong cancer.

Fortunately, for us our research was based on a number of cell types, so the impact of a mistaken identity for this line has actually been fairly minimal to us," said Dr Tselepis who is studying the cancer at the Cancer Research UK laboratories in Birmingham University.

I'm sure there's many other laboratories UK and worldwide-based that essentially base lots of their conclusions on one cell line and in that case, this mistaken identity has a large impact on conclusions that people draw from such studies," he added.

Few scientists publicly admit such problems but Prof Geoff Pilkington, of the University of Portsmouth, said  that he had to discard research into brain tumours after it emerged his team were studying human cells contaminated by the cells of rats and mice.

"Whole programmes of research had to be redone using verified human brain tumour cells,adding that it is hugely expensive and it's incredibly frustrating  he said.

Money for research and studies which can continue for several years and is supplied by the Cancer research charities.  These charities get most of their funding from the public who organise and put major effort into raising money by sponsorship, fun-runs, fetes, coffee mornings,, etc.  So you would not be surprised and highly alarmed that all this effort is going to waste.

The results fo studies are published in reputable medical and science journals around the world and the information assists researchers with their own studies.  Therefore if invalid results are published this sends further studies possibly in the wrong direction.

The answer to this problem said Prof. Roland Nardone of the Catholic University of America is to make scientists verify the cell lines by a simple DNA check.  But he added that some researchers were unwilling to comply.  The cost to authenticate cells was approx £180 GBP.

He also said that research grants should be witheld and journals to refuse publishing if the research has been carried out on unauthenticated cells lines.

The Medical Research Council, a major source of public funds for such research in the UK which provides £70m of grants annually for cancer studies, is reluctant to enforce authentication.

Cancer Research UK who spend £315 million per year would not comment on this issue.  They said that they had robust procedures with regards to validating cell lines.