Robert Folberg Promotes Authenticating Cells Lines in Ophthalmic Research

Many biomedical experiments are performed on cell cultures. One difficult problem in these experiments is maintaining pure cell lines. In the November, 2008 issue of the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, OU Dean Robert Folberg and his coauthors stress the importance of Authenticating Cell Lines in Ophthalmic Research Laboratories (Volume 49, Pages 4697-4701). They conclude that "dealing with the consequences of cross-contaminated cell lines is wasteful of time and dwindling research resources. The vision research community is now challenged to design and implement strategies to reduce the risk of misidentified cell lines in ophthalmic research." Folberg is the founding dean of the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. This paper may well be the first scholarly journal article ever published that lists the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine as the institution of one of the authors.