{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr2-cell-line-passport","kind":"idea","name":"A digital passport for every cell culture: identity, contamination status, passage number","aka":[],"tldr":"Each batch of cells used in an experiment would carry a small digital record showing when it was authenticated, tested for contamination, and how many times it had been grown, attached to the published result.","summary":"Beyond identity, mycoplasma contamination and high passage number change cell behaviour and drug sensitivity. A lightweight standard (a signed JSON record with STR match, mycoplasma test date, passage, source and thaw date) generated by lab inventory software and attached to figures or methods as a persistent identifier would make culture provenance auditable and enable meta-analyses of how provenance affects results.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Cellosaurus","url":"https://www.cellosaurus.org/"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-tr2-cell-line-authentication-mandate","idea-tr2-reagent-lot-ledger"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-reproducibility","b-preclinical-models"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Papers with passports will show higher replication rates in subsequent independent studies than those without, and passport data will reveal passage-dependent drug-sensitivity shifts in commonly used lines.","rationale":"Provenance metadata standards (for sequencing runs, for reagents) improved reproducibility where adopted; cell culture lacks one.","test":"Implement the standard in two open-source lab inventory tools; pilot in ten labs; audit reproducibility of a sample of results with and without passports.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"engineering","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-cell-line-passport/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-tr2-reagent-lot-ledger","kind":"idea","name":"Barcode every reagent lot so batch effects can be traced across experiments and labs","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-reagent-lot-ledger/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-reference-compound-panels","kind":"idea","name":"Every drug screen includes standard reference compounds whose performance is published","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-reference-compound-panels/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-cell-line-authentication-mandate","kind":"idea","name":"Prove your cell lines are what you say they are, or the paper is not published","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-cell-line-authentication-mandate/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-preclinical-models","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients","route":"/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/"},{"id":"b-reproducibility","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Preclinical results do not reproduce","route":"/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/"}]}}