Henrietta Lacks developed cervical cancer and the cells taken from a tumor biopsy have formed the HeLa cell line, named after her. Ms. Lacks didn’t know that her cells had been taken and she died in October 1951, before the significance of her cells was known. She was only 31 years old. She did not knowingly do anything in the way that some of the people we have been looking at did, but without her cells, medical research would not be as advanced as it is. So, what are HeLa cells and why are they so useful?
HeLa cells are important because they are basically immortal. All of the cells in our bodies have a lifespan, depending on where they are. Some cells live for a long time and some cells, like the ones in the lining of the intestines, only last a few days. The cells in your heart will probably last for 40 years and it is thought that cells in the brain could last for 200 years, if we could last long enough to see. However, no matter where the cell is, it will die. The cells are programmed to kill themselves when they reach the end of their lives, and they are cleared out of the body. The main reason for this is so that we don’t have too many cells and to prevent age related damage. Some cells don’t kill themselves, though, and they go on to become cancers. Henrietta Lacks’ cells didn’t have the switch that tells them to kill themselves. This is why they are considered to be an immortal cell line.
The cancer that killed Henrietta Lacks was very aggressive and it grew very quickly. From discovery to when she passed away was only 4 months. The reason her cancer was so aggressive is the reason why the cells are so useful for medical research. They do not die, they only reproduce. They can be killed, but if left alone, they just reproduce themselves. This was a first because no one had ever been able to cultivate cells that didn’t die after a few weeks. It is estimated that over 50 tons of HeLa cells have been produced so far in many countries all over the world.
HeLa cells are useful because they can be used to see how medicines and diseases alter cells. The cells have many mutations, but they are still basically human cells and researchers can introduce medicines or diseases to them to see how the genes, proteins, or nutrients are affected. With regular cells, they can only see how this works through a few generations of cells, but with HeLa cells, they can see what effect this has over any number of generations of the cells. They are also very useful in cancer research because new techniques can be tested to see if they can stop the cells reproducing. They multiply very quickly, much faster than regular cells, so it doesn’t take as long to see the effects over several generations of cells. And, they are very sturdy and easy to control in a lab environment.
HeLa cells have been used to create the polio vaccine, the COVID-19 vaccine, and several other vaccines. They have been used to produce cancer treatments. They have been used to study leukemia and AIDS. They have been used with in vitro fertilization research. They have been used to research blood disorders. They have been used to research salmonella, the effect of X-rays on cells, and the aging of cells. Along with many other things. They have played an enormous part in medical research.
There is a large controversy that surrounded the cells. They were taken without Henrietta Lacks’ permission. She was an African American and when she became sick, she went to John Hopkins hospital because it was the only hospital that would treat black patients. While she was admitted, a biopsy of the tumor on her cervix was taken and sent to a doctor called George Otto Gey. Henrietta Lacks had no knowledge that these cells were taken and she was never informed that they were being kept in a lab. The cells were marked with the first letters of her names HeLa. George Gey realized how useful these cells could be and he started to send them to labs all over the world. In the meantime, Henriette Lacks died, and no one knew who the cells had come from. They became known as HeLa cells, but nobody knew why. It was only in the 1970s that someone worked out who the cells had come from and informed Henrietta Lacks’ family. Henrietta Lacks had been buried in an unmarked grave, and the location of her body is still not known. If she only knew how many people she had helped. And this is what I learned today.
Image By (archived link), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1376912
Sources
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26873/
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/what-cells-in-the-human-body-live-the-longest
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/henrietta-lacks-immortal-cells-6421299/
https://www.webmd.com/cancer/cervical-cancer/hela-cells-cervical-cancer
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks/importance-of-hela-cells
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Otto_Gey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks