The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cells were harvested without her knowledge or consent for use in medical research, has reached a settlement with the biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Lacks' cells launched a medical revolution as well as a multimillion-dollar industry. But who was she and how have her cells saved so many lives?
Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. At the age of 31, the mother of five visited Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore because of a painful "knot" in her cervix and abnormal bleeding.
When examining her, doctors discovered a cancerous mass in the cervix. Just eight months after her diagnosis, on October 4, 1951, Lacks died and was buried in an unmarked grave. But that was not the end of her story.
Throughout her treatment at the hospital, Lacks' doctors collected samples of her tumor cells and sent them to a lab for analysis. There was something very unusual about these cells. While most human cells could survive under lab conditions for only a few days, Lacks' cells continued to grow and divide indefinitely, as if they were immortal.
This "immortality" is common among cancer cells, but Lacks' cells were able to reproduce abnormally fast, even for cancer cells. And so her cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line, known as HeLa cells after her first and last name.
Over the past seven decades, HeLa cells have contributed to roughly 70,000 scientific studies, saving millions of lives. But Lacks had never given permission for her cells to be used. It was not until decades later that her family found out what had become of her cells.
On Tuesday, which would have been her 103rd birthday, her family reached a settlement over compensation for Lacks' contribution to medical history.
Here are five of the most significant contributions HeLa cells have made to modern medicine:
HPV and Other Cancers
It makes sense that Lacks' cells have been used to advance our understanding of cervical cancer, the disease that killed her. In 1985, German scientists led by the Nobel Prize winner Harald zur Hausen discovered that HeLa cells contained multiple copies of human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18), a dangerous strain of a virus that we now know causes cervical cancer. This discovery paved the way for the development of HPV vaccines over the following decades.
HPV vaccines are now widely available and have decreased rates of cervical cancer in young women by over two-thirds.
More generally, HeLa cells have been used to develop treatments to slow cancer growth and develop cancer research methods.
Development of Polio Vaccines
One of the earliest uses of HeLa cells was in the development of polio vaccines. In 1953, researchers from Johns Hopkins Hospital discovered that HeLa cells were an effective tool for growing large amounts of the polio virus to better understand how it infects cells and causes disease.
This research was later used in the development of the polio vaccine. Polio vaccines have prevented roughly 1.5 million childhood deaths around the world since 1988, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Drugs for HIV/AIDS
HeLa cells have been used extensively to study the mechanisms used by the HIV virus to enter our cells. They have also been used to study how different drugs interact with the virus. While we still do not have a widespread cure for this disease, research with HeLa cells has enabled the development of drugs to limit its spread.
Aging
The DNA inside our cells is capped by a short section of genetic material called a telomere. These telomeres protect the ends of our chromosomes from becoming tangled or frayed, but they also become slightly shorter with every cell division. As a result, it is thought that telomeres play an important role in cellular aging.
HeLa cells were central to our discovery of these structures and our understanding of the biological processes of aging. In 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak won the Nobel Prize in physiology for their work in this field.
Space Travel
HeLa cells have even improved our understanding of the universe, albeit indirectly. Since 1964, HeLa cells have been sent into outer space to study the effects of radiation and space travel on human cells.
It is worth noting that Johns Hopkins Hospital never sold or profited from the discovery and distribution of HeLa cells. However, with each vial of HeLa cells costing up to $400, other people definitely have. But until Tuesday, this did not include her family.
"There couldn't have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief," her grandson, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr., told the Associated Press. "It was a long fight—over 70 years—and Henrietta Lacks gets her day."
