Appearances Can Deceive, Even With Standard Reagents
Culturing immortalized human cell lines for microRNA studies had been a routine procedure in Xi Jianzhong's lab at Peking University. Then last June, something went wrong. Time after time, black spots appeared in the flasks and the cells died within a week. Xi, a biomedical engineer, spent the rest of 2008 trying to figure out why his team's experiments were failing. He finally got a tip that a cell growth medium his lab was using—Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM)—might be bogus. "DMEM is so basic that we never suspected it could have problems," says Xi. Sure enough, after obtaining a fresh batch from a well-known distributor, the cell lines grew without a hitch.

China is infamous for cheap knockoffs of brand-name consumer goods. Now many scientists are discovering to their dismay that a cottage industry of faux biochemical reagents has sprung up to take advantage of China's hefty increases in R&D funding. Scientists who until recently worked overseas are especially vulnerable because they may not know which dealers to trust, Xi says. "More and more researchers are returning to China. We don't want them to waste time and money like we did," says Huang Yanyi, who like Xi is a returnee in Peking University's biomedical engineering department.

After Xi learned that many colleagues had also been victimized but kept quiet about their experiences, he contacted ScienceNet.cn, a Web site for China's scientific community. In an online survey conducted with the biweekly magazine Science News, more than half of the nearly 500 respondents reported run-ins with fake reagents, according to results posted on ScienceNet.cn on 29 April.

Exposing scams may not prevent them. Currently, no Chinese agency regulates research reagents, except those used for medical tests. A database kept by Lab-on-web (www.bioon.com.cn) lists more than 500 reagent dealers in China; many are small operations claiming to be distributors of foreign products. The Web site has also published the names of unscrupulous dealers.

Legitimate companies say there is little they can do about the bad apples. "It is a widespread concern throughout the life science and other industries in China," says Johnson Ho, president for Greater China at Life Technologies, based in Foster City, California. Invitrogen, a division of Life Technologies, discovered that some of its products had been counterfeited. It has created a list of authorized distributors (www.invitrogen.com/site/us/en/home/Global/Contact-Us/RegionalContactUs/China.html). Ho suggests customers buy only from distributors on the list.

Earlier this year, Xi confronted the Beijing-based distributor who sold his lab the false DMEM. The dealer challenged Xi to prove his case. Xi called Invitrogen's office in Shanghai, which on 20 March dispatched representative Ju Jun to Xi's lab to examine the DMEM. At first glance, the packages looked genuine, but a search in Invitrogen's database by lot number, which anyone can do on the company's Web site, revealed that one lot number did not exist, and a second had an expiration date that was different from that stated on the fake DMEM's package.

Counterfeits are not limited to Invitrogen products. In recent years, others have reported fake enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits and ovalbumin products. More than time or money may be at stake, says Huang. If Chinese researchers were to publish spurious results because of fake reagents, he says, "we could lose our credibility as scientists."

Xi是北京大学的一名生物医学工程师，采用永生细胞株培养进行micro RNA研究对他掌管的实验室来说是一个标准程序，但去年六月Xi遇到了麻烦，他实验室里的培养瓶总出现黑点，细胞接种后一周内就死亡。

在2008年剩下的时间他试图搞明白为什么他领导的试验总是失败，最终发现他实验室使用的一种细胞培养基DMEM可能是假货。

Xi说，“DMEM是非常基本的试剂，我们从未想到它会出现问题”。

之后，在从正规分销商处获得新的DMEM后，细胞生长良好。

中国因以极低成本仿制品牌消费品而声誉欠佳，更不可思议的是，很多科学家惊恐的发现中国居然出现了生产假生化制剂的家庭作坊，试图利用中国在研发领域加大投入的“商机”发财。

Xii说归国不久的科学家很容易受骗，因为他们可能不清楚国内哪些经销商可靠。和Xi同样是海归的huang yanyi说：目前有越来越多的研究者回到中国，我们不希望他们象我们当初一样在假试剂上浪费时间和金钱。

当Xi得知还有其他人同样受害但采取沉默态度后，他联系了ScienceNet.cn，中国科学委员会的一个网站。在每两周一期的Science News杂志上，4月29日登出的结果显示，500名参与调查者中超过一半称曾和假试剂打过交道。

但将此曝光可能阻止不了他们继续造假。目前，除了医用试剂以外，没有专门的官方机构监管试剂。Lab-on-web数据库列出了超过500家经销商，他们中大部分规模都很小，宣称是国外产品的分销商。该网站同时还列出了造假商家的名字。

合法公司称对这些烂苹果他们无计可施。Johnson Ho，Greater China at Life Technologies的总裁，称在中国这种让人担忧的现象在生命科学和其他产业很普遍。

Introgen发现他们的某些产品被造假后，在网站列出了授权分销商的名单。Ho建议客户只从名单上列出的分销商处购买产品。

今年早些时候，Xi和卖给他假DMEM的商家对质，但商家挑衅Xi让他拿出证据。Xi打电话给Invitrogen上海办事处，3月20日上海办事处派Ju Jun到Xi的实验室，检查DMEM，发现包装第一眼看上去是真的，但是批号有问题，一个根本不存在，另一个有效期不符。

制假不仅限于invitrogen的产品，近年来，还有Elisa试剂盒及卵白蛋白制假的报告。Huang说，使用假试剂不仅仅浪费钱和时间，如果中国科研人员因使用假试剂刊出假的结果，那么失去的将是科学家的诚信。