How Do HeLa Cells Work?

Most of the human cells grown in labs that are used for scientific research come from samples taken from one woman in the 1950s. Learn about the amazing yet nonconsenting contribution of Henrietta Lacks in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/hela-cell.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren Vogelbaum here. In February of nineteen fifty one, a
young black woman by the name of Henrietta Lax, thirty
years old and the mother of five, was diagnosed with
cervical cancer. Her doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital biopsied the

(00:22):
tumor and took samples of the cells to use in
their research. They were amazed to find that, unlike the
other cells they'd studied, which would die after dividing a
few times in a test tube, some of Lax cells
kept growing. This became the world's first cell line, a
population of cells taken from a person and grown in vitro,

(00:43):
that is, in labs to be used for scientific research.
Cell Lines are often named after the people from whom
they were originally derived, so Henrietta Lax are known as
HeLa cells. Cell Lines are used in all kinds of ways,
like studying the effects of diseases and developed medications and vaccines.
They play an invaluable role in medicine today. LAX's cervical

(01:07):
cancer was aggressive, it metastasized, and she died later that year.
In October of nineteen fifty one, but almost seventy five
years later, her cells, billions upon billions of them, live
on in laboratories all over the world. It's still one
of the most, if not the most commonly used cell line,

(01:28):
and it's known to be extremely resilient. The thing is,
Lax didn't give permission for her tissue to be used
for research. She wasn't even informed about it. Neither was
her family. And while her cells have gone on to
produce groundbreaking medical research and thereby earn a lot of
money for biotechnology companies, her family didn't even know for

(01:49):
twenty five years and didn't see a single cent for
a lot longer than that. LAX's story isn't just about
her contribution to medicine. It's about the ethics of biomedical
research and the practice of informed consent. So today let's
talk about all of that, But let's start at the
beginning with Lax herself. Henrietta Lax was a young African

(02:14):
American woman from Virginia who'd grown up in tobacco farming communities. Later,
she lived with her husband and their children outside of Baltimore, Maryland,
in the historically black community of Turner Station. There She
was the center of a home, welcoming of extended family
and anyone in need. Lax loved to cook, including a
favorite spaghetti. She liked to dress sharp and favored red

(02:38):
nail polish. She also loved dancing, including with her kids.
While pregnant with their fifth child, she felt unknot in
her abdomen. After childbirth, Lax experienced abnormal bleeding. Her doctor
discovered a lump on her cervix and sent a sample
of it to a lab, resulting in her cancer diagnosis.

(02:58):
The only hospital in the area that would treat black
patients was Johns Hopkins, so that's where she went for
radiation treatments. This was a relatively new field and at
the time involved inserting tubes of radium around the cervix
and sewing them into place, along with X ray treatments,
but the cancer still spread. Lax died in the hospital

(03:19):
at the age of thirty one, just nine months after
her diagnosis. During her treatments, lax doctor removed some tissue
samples from her cervical tumor. She'd signed the usual forms
consenting to treatment for cancer, but wasn't asked for her
permission to remove the tissue. Samples, nor was she informed
that it had been done afterward. This was standard procedure

(03:41):
at the time it was completely legal. The tissue was
sent to one doctor, George Guy, in the Johns Hopkins
Tissue Culture laboratory. Doctor Guy had been trying and failing
to grow human cells in the lab for years, but
he isolated one of lax cells and got it to divide,
and it just kept going. He named the line HeLa.

(04:03):
Its first use was fittingly in cancer research. Normally, all
of the cells in the human body experience the effects
of aging over time, known as cellular's essence. Repeated divisions
cause the cell's DNA to become unstable, meaning that eventually
the cell is unable to replicate and it dies. This

(04:24):
is called programmed cell death or apoptosis, and it varies
depending on the type of cell. Apoptosis can be a
good thing. It's how fingers and toes are formed in uterobe.
Human fetuses start out with web dependages that separate thanks
to programmed cell death. It's also how our immune system
kills off cells that are infected by viruses. Too much.

(04:47):
Apoptosis can cause tissue damage and lead to disease, but
so can too little. For example, if cells grow out
of control, they can become cancerous. In a laboratory setting,
apoptosis generally occurs after about fifty cell divisions, but under
the right conditions, HeLa cells divide indefinitely. Remember that HeLa

(05:10):
cells were grown from tumor tissue. Cancer cells don't go
through apoptosis with the regularity that normal cells do, and
Lack cells were especially hardy. Just as the cancer grew
and spread quickly throughout Lack's body, HeLa cells grow and
spread quickly in vitro. Nobody knows quite why doctor Guy

(05:31):
and Johns Hopkins didn't seek to profit off of the
HeLa line. They provided samples for free. Now HeLa cells
are used around the world. There are over sixty thousand
medical journal articles about them and some eleven thousand patents
related to their use. There are thousands of other cell lines,
but HeLa remains popular because it's easy to grow, store,
and ship. The heartiness and popularity of HeLa cells has

(05:56):
actually led to a problem contamination. Some recentatures even think
of the cells as a weed. They're difficult to get
rid of and can overwhelm other cell lines and ruin research,
but their resilience is what's made them such an incredible tool.
The helo cell line has helped found entire fields of study.
Researchers essentially created the field of virology the study of

(06:18):
viruses after infecting helo cells with measles or mumps so
that they could observe how the viruses affected the cells.
This led to the creation of some of the vaccines
in use today, and recently, helo cells were used in
the formulation of COVID nineteen vaccines. Genetic medicine got its
start in the nineteen fifties when researchers discovered that helo

(06:39):
cell's chromosomes were visible when treated with this specific stain,
which led to the discovery of our typical twenty three
pairs of chromosomes. In the mid nineteen sixties, HeLa cells
helped researchers begin the process of mapping the human genome.
Polio has been eradicated in the Western hemisphere thanks to
Jonas Sulk and the vaccine that he tested using helo cell.

(07:00):
The line has also been instrumental in studying tuberculosis, HIV,
and human papillomavirus or HPV, which is usually what causes
cervical cancer and which eventually resulted in a vaccine. HeLa
cells were used to improve in vitro fertilization techniques, to
test medications for cancer in Parkinson's, to observe the effects
of radiation and toxins, and to test the safety of

(07:23):
products like cosmetics, tape, and glue. It's estimated that over
fifty million metric tons of HeLa cells have been grown
since her unwitting donation. That lack of consent to her
cells being taken and used for research has become a
central example in the field of ethics in biomedical research.

(07:46):
It wasn't until the early nineteen seventies that Lack's family
got an inkling of her legacy. Her widowed husband got
a confusing call from a researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
He thought they were saying that they needed to test
their children to find out if they also had cancer.
The kids submitted to testing, but were never contacted about
the results. It wasn't done for them, but to better

(08:08):
understand Henriette's genetics. The first time the family better understood
the cells continued existence was after an article about the
HILA line ran in Rolling Stone in nineteen seventy six,
a doctor Guy and Johns Hopkins didn't profit off of HeLa,
but related products have been sold since nineteen fifty four.
For decades, doctors and researchers failed to ask for the

(08:30):
family's consent before publishing lax medical records and even a
genome from one group of her cells. Amidst ethical controversy,
it was taken offline and some rights were then acknowledged
to the family. In twenty thirteen, they granted permission for
another genome based on the HILA line to be published.
Until twenty twenty three. The Lax family received no compensation

(08:54):
for Henriette's world changing contribution, nor for the breach of
their privacy. That compensation was the result of a lawsuit
against biotechnology company thermofish or Scientific Ink. They claimed the
company had lined their pockets for decades, even after Lack's
identity was known. They pointed out that the company had
given millions to their CEO while Black's surviving family was

(09:16):
unable to afford health insurance. The company wound up settling
with them for a confidential amount. This story also touches
on the exploitation of minority groups as test subjects, including
people who can't afford healthcare, and people of color, and
in the US, especially the black community. The argument from
the medical community has long been that once blood or

(09:38):
tissues are removed from you, they're not really yours anymore.
They say it would slow or stymy life saving research,
that it would be far too complicated and costly to
have to track the identities behind every sample and pay
if there's some monetary gain. American courts have sided with
researchers so far, but they've also upheld the necessity of

(09:59):
patients in fum formed consent. However, one hundred and five
years after her birth and seventy four years into her
cell lines existence, Henrietta Lax has finally gotten some recognition. JOHNS.
Hopkins has named a building for her and established a
memorial award in her name. She's been commemorated by organizations
like the Moorhouse College of Medicine, the Smithsonian, and the

(10:22):
World Health Organization. In twenty ten, a science writer by
the name of Rebecca Sclute published a best selling book
called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax, which HBO made
into a movie in twenty seventeen, featuring Oprah Winfrey playing
Henriette's daughter, and in twenty ten, a headstone was finally
placed at las previously unmarked grave. Sclute also created the

(10:46):
Henriette Lax Foundation to educate people about Lax and to
help her family and others like hers with expenses for
education and health care. Today, a number of laboratories that
use HeLa Cell's make donations to the foundation. Today's episode

(11:06):
is based on the article how HeLa Sells works on
how stuffworks dot Com, written by Shanna Freeman. Brain Stuff
is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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