HeLa Cells - A Blessing or a Curse
Tuesday, October 16, 2007, 12:00 PM Eastern Time (ET)

HeLa cells were isolated in the early 1950s and within 10 years had helped change the way cell culture was done. Unfortunately, during this same period, Hela cells contaminated most of the other available cell lines. Today many researchers are still using HeLa contaminated cell lines. However, this world-wide problem of cross-contamination of cell lines by other cell lines is not limited to just HeLa cells. This webinar will cover the history of the one of the world’s most popular cell lines and how it spread. Also covered will be methods for detecting cross contamination, as well as simple and easy to employ strategies to prevent it from happening to your research program.

Speaker: John Ryan, Ph.D.

John Ryan, Ph.D., has spent over 32 years in the fields of both animal and plant cell culture. He received his initial culture training during the nine years he spent at the W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center in Lake Placid, New York. There he was a member of the Center's Education Department that offered a wide variety of undergraduate and postgraduate training programs in plant and animal cell culture techniques. Since then, he has worked for over thirteen years with Corning Life Sciences, where he is currently Technical Marketing Manager. He has also worked at Bionique Testing Laboratories, the American Type Culture Collection, and the University of Connecticut from where he received his doctorate in Biochemistry.

We hope you will join us for this exclusive event.