Human cancer cell lines have an essential role in cancer research, but only authentic cell lines should be used as biological models. Authentication testing using short tandem repeat (STR) loci has shown that MGC-803 cells, which were reported to come from gastric adenocarcinoma, are similar to HeLa. In this study, we confirmed that the MGC-803 cell line contains genetic material from HeLa, including genetic sequence from human papilloma virus 18 (HPV18). Additional alleles were present on STR analysis that remained stable after extensive passaging and generation of mono-clones. This behavior is consistent with a hybrid cell line arising from cell–cell fusion. Further genetic analysis revealed that MGC-803 originated from donors with different genetic ancestries, one African (HeLa) and the other Asian. Transcriptomic analysis demonstrated that MGC-803 closely resembles HeLa and another nasopharyngeal–HeLa hybrid cell line CNE-2. Based on these findings, we conclude that MGC-803 is a hybrid cell line derived from HeLa and other cells, the latter derived from a different patient with Asian genetic ancestry.

人类癌细胞系在癌症研究中发挥着重要作用，但只有真实的细胞系才能用作生物模型。使用短串联重复 (STR) 位点的验证测试表明，据报道来自胃腺癌的 MGC-803 细胞与 HeLa 细胞相似。在这项研究中，我们证实MGC-803细胞系含有来自HeLa的遗传物质，包括来自人乳头瘤病毒18（HPV18）的基因序列。STR 分析中存在其他等位基因，这些等位基因在广泛传代和产生单克隆后保持稳定。这种行为与细胞-细胞融合产生的杂交细胞系一致。进一步的基因分析显示，MGC-803 源自具有不同遗传血统的捐赠者，一名来自非洲 (HeLa)，另一名来自亚洲。转录组分析表明 MGC-803 与 HeLa 和另一种鼻咽-HeLa 杂交细胞系 CNE-2 非常相似。基于这些发现，我们得出结论，MGC-803 是源自 HeLa 和其他细胞的杂交细胞系，后者源自具有亚洲遗传血统的不同患者。