Cell line cross-contamination in the laboratory is often the result of failing to adopt good cell culture practices. Common causes may include:
Mislabeling flasks
Misreading flask labels
Accidentally inoculating one cell line with another cell line
Storing multiple cell lines together in a safety cabinet
Using one reservoir of medium for multiple cell lines simultaneously
Accidentally transferring cells to stock bottle
Thawing a wrong frozen stock
Using the same tools when working with different cell lines
Using cell samples that are not tested thoroughly
Adopting good cell culture practices combined with regular quality control is key to eliminating cell line cross contamination which compromises research results leading to unusable therapeutic products.