On 2014 Oct 15, Amanda Capes-Davis commented:

The cell lines used here - HEp-2 and KB - are both known to be cross-contaminated. Unfortunately, that means that both of these models are actually HeLa, from cervical carcinoma.

HEp-2 and KB are widely used in the literature as models for head and neck SCC, even though they are not appropriate models for this tissue type. Always be careful to test cell lines to check that they are not cross-contaminated, using a consensus method such as short tandem repeat (STR) profiling.

For a list of known cross-contaminated or otherwise misidentified cell lines, see http://iclac.org/databases/cross-contaminations/.

On 2014 Oct 15, Amanda Capes-Davis commented:

The cell lines used here - HEp-2 and KB - are both known to be cross-contaminated. Unfortunately, that means that both of these models are actually HeLa, from cervical carcinoma.

HEp-2 and KB are widely used in the literature as models for head and neck SCC, even though they are not appropriate models for this tissue type. Always be careful to test cell lines to check that they are not cross-contaminated, using a consensus method such as short tandem repeat (STR) profiling.

For a list of known cross-contaminated or otherwise misidentified cell lines, see http://iclac.org/databases/cross-contaminations/.