Optimization of the Scheme for Decontaminating Continuous Human Cell Cultures with Antibiotics of Different Mechanisms

The absence of contamination is an important condition for the reliability of the results obtained when conducting experiments on cell cultures. At the same time, long-term cultivation significantly increases the risk of contamination of the cellular material, and therefore it is necessary to maintain cellular purity and remove contaminants in the event of contamination. The most common contaminants are bacteria, yeast and fungi, and, in rare cases, viruses and protozoa. Accordingly, to combat biological contamination, it is necessary to use drugs of different mechanisms depending on the nature of the contaminant. The article examines the effect of the most common antibiotic and antimycotic drugs in laboratory practice on the vital activity of continuous adherent human cell cultures. It was shown that different cell cultures have different sensitivity to the drugs used for decontamination, which indicates the need to develop individual treatment regimens for a specific cell line. Safe ranges of drug concentrations were established for lung adenocarcinoma, osteosarcoma, colorectal carcinoma, and human embryonic kidney cells. Taking into account the obtained data, spontaneous contamination was treated in a long-cultivated strain of the H1299 line. Artificial infection of the studied cell lines with the identified contaminant followed by treatment according to a similar scheme confirmed the adequacy of using ciprofloxacin for decontamination of various adherent cultures in laboratory practice.