Immortal HeLa cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Cell Culture of the Immortal Woman Nela

Every person is unique in their own way, but only a few of us have extraordinary abilities that can change the world. In our article we will tell you about the amazing Henrietta Lacks, who saved millions of lives thanks to what made her different from others.

In the 1950s, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore was rightfully considered one of the best medical institutions in the country. In addition, at that time it was one of the few hospitals where African Americans were allowed to seek medical care. Henrietta Lacks was one of them, so she went there in February 1951, when she began to be bothered by pain in her lower abdomen.

She told Dr. Howard Jones, a gynecologist, about unusual bleeding and complained of pain. Upon examination, the doctor discovered a tumor and immediately sent a sample of its tissue to the laboratory of Dr. George Gay. The test results confirmed that the tumor was malignant. As a treatment, the patient was prescribed radium irradiation, but since cancer treatment was very limited in those days, Henrietta died after 7 months.

Dr. George Gay studied Henrietta's tissue sample particularly carefully. He was extremely amazed by the durability and speed of reproduction of the cells presented. As a rule, samples delivered to the laboratory die within a couple of hours, but Lax’s cells not only lived, but continued to divide. This explained the rapid and aggressive growth of the tumor - it grew faster than the radiation could kill them.

Dr. Gay immediately sent cell samples to several advanced research centers across America. Jonas Salk worked in one of these centers, who used Henrietta's cells to develop a vaccine against polio - in the future it saved millions of people from unbearable suffering and certain death.

The doctor who discovered the unique property of the cells named them “HeLa” - after the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks’ first and last name. Thus, he immortalized the woman who became the cause of a powerful breakthrough in medicine.

Studying the genotype of the cells, scientists came to the conclusion that the cause of Henrietta’s disease was a mutation that included papillomavirus genes in the DNA. In addition to the aggressive behavior of the tumor, this mutation contributed to an increase in the number of chromosomes in the cells and their ability to produce telomerase, an enzyme that stabilized the chromosomes and protected them from further mutations. What happened to Henrietta was a complete accident; no similar mutations were found in the DNA of her children.

Several years later, the Lacks family demanded public recognition of Henrietta's life-saving contributions because biological materials (blood and cells) that contributed to medical progress were used in research without the consent of the patient or her relatives. In the middle of the last century, the public would not have allowed such honors to be given to an African-American woman; the news of the discovery of HeLa cells was on everyone’s lips, but the journalists were given a fake name - Helen Lane.

In 2010, independent science writer Rebecca Skloot published the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” and in 2017, HBO presented a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. Thanks to them, the world learned about a simple woman who gave medicine her immortal cells. About 74 thousand scientific articles were devoted to studies of HeLa cells, in which scientists tried to explain the nature of this phenomenon. In addition to the invention of the polio vaccine, Henrietta's cells have been used to study cancer, AIDS and a variety of other diseases, as well as to study the effects of radiation and toxic substances on the human body.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”
Credit" HBO
Portrait of Henrietta Lacks at the National Portrait Gallery

The collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, where portraits of famous Americans are displayed, has been replenished with another painting. Visitors will now be able to view a portrait of Henrietta Lacks, a young Virginian whose contributions to modern medicine are extremely important.

No, she was not a doctor, she did not invent new therapies or develop drugs. Henrietta was a patient. In 1951, she, an African-American mother of five children, was treated for. She turned to doctors after she began to worry about discharge on her underwear. During the tests, doctors took a fragment of tumor tissue for further research. Henrietta, who was undergoing radiation therapy, did not know about this. The treatment, unfortunately, did not produce results - at the age of 31, Henrietta Lacks died.

It turned out that the cells taken from her tumor had amazing properties. They were sent by mail to another laboratory and not only survived the shipment, but also continued to divide quickly and stably. Their amazing properties were discovered by George Gay, head of the cell research laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Subsequently, the cell line obtained from cells taken from Henrietta Lacks was named HeLa. Nowadays, cells of this line are found in almost every laboratory engaged in molecular genetic research. The results of experiments carried out using these cells can be compared with each other - experiments on the HeLa cell line are a kind of standard.

Before this, scientists did not have such stable cell lines in their arsenal - after several divisions, the cells died, often the researchers were not even able to complete the experiment. Now, with the advent of the HeLa line, this became possible, and the results obtained even in different laboratories could be compared.

Using this line, drugs were obtained for patients with hemophilia, leukemia and herpes, and the number of experiments in which it was used cannot be counted. HeLa cells were even sent into space, where the effect of weightlessness on their division and development was studied. Currently, it is on them that experiments are being conducted to create drugs for the treatment of Ebola.

Although many of the medical discoveries made in recent decades would not have been possible without HeLa cells, until 1975, no one in Henrietta Lacks' family even knew that such a cell line existed. The question of paying compensation for the use of donor cells in scientific research also remained unanswered - by this time not only Henrietta had died, but also the doctor who knew about the source of the cells.

The appearance of the portrait of Henrietta Lacks in the National Portrait Gallery is a tribute to the memory and respect of this woman. The painting, created by Kadir Nelson, shows her in a red dress. Several buttons are missing from it - this symbolizes the cells taken without her permission. In the background is wallpaper with a hexagon pattern. Strange twisted figures inside each of them are a symbol of immortality.

The portrait has already been seen by Henrietta’s grandchildren, who found it delightful. The management of the museum believes that the appearance of the painting in the museum will help once again raise the question that many of those who are now almost not remembered also contributed to science.

These cells found their way into big science completely unexpectedly. They were taken from a woman named Henrietta LAcks, who died shortly thereafter. But culturing the cells of the tumor that killed her turned out to be an indispensable tool for scientists.

Biomedical research and the development of new treatments often use laboratory-grown human cell cultures. Among the many cell lines, one of the most famous is HeLa. These cells mimic the human body in vitro(“in vitro”), “eternal” - they can be divided endlessly, the results of studies using them are reliably reproduced in different laboratories. On their surface they carry a fairly universal set of receptors, which allows them to be used to study the action of various substances, from simple inorganic substances to proteins and nucleic acids; They are unpretentious in cultivation and tolerate freezing and preservation well.

Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was a beautiful black American woman. ( Wild_Katze's note: She was actually African American, like Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama.) She lived in the small town of Turner in Southern Virginia with her husband and five children. On February 1, 1951, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because she was worried about strange discharge that she periodically discovered on her underwear. The medical diagnosis was terrible and merciless - cervical cancer. Eight months later, despite surgery and radiotherapy, she died. She was 31 years old.

While Henrietta was in the Hopkins hospital, the attending physician sent the tumor cells obtained through a biopsy for analysis to George Gay, the head of the tissue cell research laboratory at the Hopkins hospital. At that time, culturing cells outside the body was only in its infancy, and the main problem was the inevitable death of cells - after a certain number of divisions, the entire cell line died.

It turned out that the cells, designated "HeLa" (an acronym for Henrietta Lacks' first and last name), multiplied much faster than cells from normal tissues. In addition, the malignant transformation made these cells immortal - their growth suppression program was turned off after a certain number of divisions. In vitro This has never happened to any other cells before. This opened up unprecedented prospects in biology.

Indeed, never until now have researchers been able to consider the results obtained on cell cultures to be completely reliable: all experiments were carried out on heterogeneous cell lines, which eventually died - sometimes even before any results could be obtained. And then scientists became the owners of the first stable and even eternal (!) cell line that adequately imitates the properties of the body. And when it was discovered that HeLa cells could even survive mailing, Gay sent them to his colleagues across the country. Very soon, the demand for HeLa cells grew, and they were replicated in laboratories around the world. They became the first “template” cell line.

Henrietta Lacks's involuntary contribution to medicine is invaluable: the cells left after her death have been saving human lives for more than half a century

It so happened that Henrietta died on the very day that George Gay spoke in front of television cameras, holding a test tube with her cells in his hands. He said that an era of new perspectives in drug discovery and biomedical research has begun.

Why are her cells so important?

And he was right. The cell line, identical in all laboratories around the world, made it possible to quickly obtain and independently confirm more and more new data. We can safely say that the giant leap of molecular biology at the end of the last century was due to the ability to culture cells in vitro. Henrietta Lacks's cells were the first immortal human cells ever to be grown in an artificial culture medium. HeLa has taught researchers how to culture hundreds of other cancer cell lines. And although in recent years the priority in this area has shifted towards normal tissue cell cultures and induced pluripotent stem cells (Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka received the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of a method for returning adult cells to the embryonic state), nevertheless cancer cells remain an accepted standard in biomedical research. The main advantage of HeLa is its unstoppable growth on simple nutrient media, which allows large-scale research to be carried out at minimal cost.
(Note by Wild_Katze: Definition from the wiki “Pluripotency (English Pluripotency from Latin pluralis - multiple, potentia - strength, power, opportunity, in a broad sense can be translated as “the possibility of development according to different scenarios”). In biological systems, this term refers to cellular biology and to biological compounds. Pluripotent cells can differentiate into all types of cells, except for cells of extraembryonic organs (placenta and yolk sac).)


HeLa cells photographed using an electron microscope (about a thousand times magnification)

Since Henrietta Lacks' death, her tumor cells have been continuously used to study the molecular patterns of a wide variety of diseases, including cancer and AIDS, to study the effects of radiation and toxic substances, to compile genetic maps and a huge number of other scientific tasks. In the world of biomedicine, HeLa cells have become as famous as lab rats and petri dishes. In December 1960, HeLa cells were the first to fly into space in the Soviet satellite. Even today, the scope of experiments carried out by Soviet geneticists in space is amazing. The results showed that HeLa perform well not only in terrestrial conditions, but also in zero gravity.

Without HeLa cells, the development of the polio vaccine created by Jonas Salk would have been impossible. By the way, Salk was so confident in the safety of the vaccine he received (a weakened polio virus) that, to prove the reliability of his medicine, he injected himself, his wife and three children with the vaccine.

Since then, HeLa has been used for cloning (preliminary experiments on the transplantation of cell nuclei before cloning the famous sheep Dolly were carried out on HeLa), to develop methods of artificial insemination and thousands of other studies (some of them are shown in the table).

Four stages of the experiment

Today in molecular biology and pharmacology, as a rule, the following stages are used:

1. HeLa (or any other laboratory cell line).

2. Untransformed short-lived cell lines - skin cells, blood cells, etc. Working with them is much more difficult, they die quickly, however, if the experiment has been worked out on HeLa, scientists know what and where to look, and do not waste time on a wide range of search.

3. Model organisms - mice, rats, monkeys. Here experiments last for months and cost orders of magnitude more. However, it is a necessary step before testing potential drugs or studying the causes of human diseases in humans.

4. Multi-stage clinical trials on humans.

Besides science...

The identity of Henrietta Lacks herself was not advertised for a long time. For Dr. Gay, of course, the origin of HeLa cells was no secret, but he believed that confidentiality in this matter was a priority, and for many years the Lacks family did not know that Henrietta's cells had become famous throughout the world. The secret was revealed only after the death of Dr. Gay in 1970.

Let us remember that standards of sterility and techniques for working with cell lines were just emerging at that time, and some errors surfaced only years later. So in the case of HeLa cells - after 25 years, scientists found that many cell cultures used in research, originating from other types of tissues, including breast and prostate cancer cells, turned out to be infected with more aggressive and tenacious HeLa cells. It turned out that HeLa can travel with dust particles in the air or on insufficiently washed hands and take root in cultures of other cells. This caused a big scandal. Hoping to solve the problem through genotyping (sequencing - the complete reading of the genome - was still being planned as a grand international project at the time), one group of scientists tracked down Henrietta's relatives and asked for samples of the family's DNA in order to map their genes. Thus, the secret became clear.
(Note from Wild_Katze: You should not be afraid that you can become infected with HeLa cells flying in the air or on insufficiently washed hands, because these cells grow uncontrollably not just anywhere and not in any conditions, but on artificial nutrient media under certain cell culture conditions.)

By the way, Americans are still more worried about the fact that Henrietta’s family never received compensation for using HeLa cells without the donor’s consent. To this day, the family does not live in very good prosperity, and financial assistance would be very helpful. But all requests hit a blank wall - there are no respondents for a long time, and the Medical Academy and other scientific structures predictably do not want to discuss this topic.


Posthumous feats of living cells

On March 11, 2013, a new publication added fuel to the fire, where the results of the complete genome sequencing of the HeLa cell line were presented. Again, the experiment was conducted without the consent of Henrietta's descendants, and after some ethical debate, full access to genomic information was restricted to professionals. However, the complete genome sequence of HeLa is of great importance for subsequent work, allowing the cell line to be used in future genomic projects.
(Note by Wild_Katze: Sequence is the result of determining the sequence of nucleic acids in the genome (DNA).)

Real immortality?

The malignant tumor that killed Henrietta made her cells potentially immortal. Did this woman want immortality? And did she receive it? If you think about it, you get a fantastic feeling - a part of a living person, artificially propagated, endures millions of tests, “tastes” all the drugs before they go into animal testing, is stripped down to the very basics by molecular biologists all over the world. ..

Cell record holders

The immortality of HeLa cells is associated with the consequences of infection with the human papillomavirus HPV18. The infection caused triploidy of many chromosomes (the formation of three copies of them instead of the usual pair) and the splitting of some of them into fragments. In addition, as a result of infection, the activity of a number of cell growth regulators increased, such as telomerase genes (a regulator of cell “mortality”) and c-Myc (a regulator of the activity of the synthesis of many proteins). Such unique (and random) changes have made HeLa cells record holders for growth speed and resistance, even among other cancer cell lines, of which there are several hundred today. In addition, the resulting genome changes turned out to be very stable and remain unchanged in the laboratory over the past years.

Of course, all this has nothing to do with “life after life.” It is foolish to believe that in the HeLa cells, constantly tormented by insatiable scientists, there is at least some piece of the soul of the unfortunate young woman. Moreover, these cells can only be partially considered human. In the nucleus of each HeLa cell there are from 76 to 82 chromosomes due to the transformation that occurred during the process of malignancy (normal human cells contain 46 chromosomes), and this polyploidy periodically causes controversy about the suitability of HeLa cells as a model of human physiology. It was even proposed to isolate these cells into a separate species, close to humans, called Helacyton gartleri, in honor of Stanley Hartler, who studied these cells, but this is not seriously discussed today.

However, researchers are always mindful of limitations that need to be kept in mind. First, HeLa, despite all the changes, are still human cells: all their genes and biological molecules correspond to human ones, and the molecular interactions are in the vast majority of cases identical to the biochemical pathways of healthy cells. Secondly, polyploidy makes this line more convenient for genomic research, since the amount of genetic material in one cell is increased, and the results are clearer and more contrasting. Thirdly, the wide distribution of cell lines around the world makes it possible to easily repeat the experiments of colleagues and use published data as the basis for their own research. Having established the basic facts on the HeLa model (and everyone remembers that this is at least a convenient, but only a model of an organism), scientists are trying to repeat them on more adequate model systems. As you can see, HeLa and similar cells represent the foundation for all science today. And, despite ethical and moral disputes, today I would like to honor the memory of this woman, since her involuntary contribution to medicine is invaluable: the cells left behind saved and continue to save more lives than any doctor can do.

ISBN: 978-5-904946-13-5
Pages: 392
Weight: 624 g.
Dimensions: 163x241x25 mm.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. A poor woman on a tobacco plantation in the southern United States worked the same land as her slave ancestors, while her cells, taken without her consent, became one of the most important tools in medicine. These “immortal” cells of the human body are alive to this day, while their owner died almost seventy years ago.

HeLa cells were vital in the development of the polio vaccine; with their help, they revealed the secrets of cancer, viruses and the effects of a nuclear explosion; they helped make important steps in the study of artificial insemination, cloning and genetic mapping. These cells have been bought and sold countless times. They started a revolution in medicine and helped give birth to a billion-dollar industry. However, Henrietta Lacks herself remains largely unknown and is buried in an unmarked grave.

This book is a worldwide scandal. Who has the right to our body, or its parts, or biomaterial taken for analysis: we, doctors, scientists?..

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About the book

Henrietta Lacks was a beautiful black American woman. She lived in the small town of Turner in Southern Virginia with her husband and five children. On February 1, 1951, Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The medical diagnosis was terrible and merciless - cervical cancer. Eight months later, despite surgery and radiation exposure, she died. She was 31 years old.

While Henrietta Lacks was at Hopkins, her doctor sent her tumor to the tissue cell research laboratory at Hopkins for testing. At that time, culturing cells outside the body was only in its infancy, and the main problem was predetermined cell death - after a certain number of divisions, the entire cell line died.

It turned out that the cells, designated "HeLa" (short for Henrietta Lacks' first and last name), multiplied twice as fast as cells from normal tissues. This has never happened to any other cells before. In addition, the transformation made these cells immortal - their growth suppression program was turned off after a certain number of divisions. This opened up unprecedented prospects in biology.

Indeed, never before had researchers been able to consider the results obtained on cell cultures so reliable: previously, all experiments were carried out on heterogeneous cell lines, which eventually died - sometimes before any results could be obtained. And then scientists obtained the first stable and even eternal (!) cell line, which quite adequately imitates the essence of the organism. And when it was discovered that HeLa cells could even survive mailing, Gay sent them to his colleagues across the country. Very soon, the demand for HeLa cells grew, and they were replicated in laboratories around the world. They became the first “template” cell line.

HeLa cells helped develop vaccines against polio, reveal the secrets of cancer, viruses and the effects of a nuclear explosion; they helped make important steps in the study of artificial insemination, cloning and genetic mapping. And they inevitably became the subject of “purchase and sale”: some became rich, others did not even suspect that “experiments” were being carried out on them.

It so happened that Henrietta Lacks died on the very day that George Gay stood before television cameras, holding a test tube of her cells, and declared that a new era in medical research had begun - an era of new perspectives in the search for cures and the study of life.

The identity of Henrietta Lacks herself was not advertised for a long time. Dr. Gay, of course, knew about the origin of HeLa cells, but he believed that confidentiality in this matter was a priority, and for many years the Lacks family did not know that it was her cells that became famous throughout the world. After Dr. Gay's death in 1970, the mystery was revealed.

This book is a journalistic investigation conducted many years after those events. This book shocked the world in 2010. It became a bestseller, breaking every conceivable sales record.

Henrietta Lacks' family did not know about the "immortality" of her cells. Henrietta's cells formed the basis of human biomaterials that are sold and from which millions of dollars are made, and her family never received a penny from it.

It took more than ten years to collect materials about this story. All this time, Rebecca took part in the life of the Lacks family - especially Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, whom the story of her mother’s cells led to a nervous breakdown and a feeling of the meaninglessness of life. “And if her mother needed medicine so much, why can’t her children afford health insurance?”

Rebecca Skloot explores the Lacks family's past and present, which is inextricably linked to dark stories of African-American experimentation, the birth of bioethics, and legal battles over whether we truly have control over our bodies and their parts.

It takes us on a fascinating journey that begins in the 1950s in the colored ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital and continues into gleaming white laboratories with refrigerators full of HeLa cells. Together with her, we will see Henrietta's hometown - the now extinct Clover in Virginia - the birthplace of wooden barracks, witchcraft and healing by the power of faith, and we will get to East Baltimore, where today Henrietta's children and grandchildren live and fight for the inheritance rights to her cells.

This book is a dramatic story about the fate of a simple woman who gave the world her immortal cells, about honest and dishonest doctors, about legal battles, and the birth of bioethics. A beautiful and dramatic piece of scientific research that you won't be able to put down.

Reviews

Wonderful...The portrayal of the entire life of the Lacks imbues the book with humanity and tangible connections between race, science and exploitation.

Paula J. Giddings, author of Ida, a Sword Among the Lions; Elizabeth E. Woodson

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks takes the reader on a fascinating and compelling journey of compassion, suspense, fun and insight. Along the way, Rebecca Skloot will change the way you think about medical science and make you wonder who we should value more—the researcher or the subject? An ethically captivating and absolutely charming book, I couldn't recommend it better.

Deborah Blam, author of The Poisoner's Handbook

A scholarly biography like the world has never seen before... Ladies and gentlemen, meet Henrietta Lacks. Although it is likely that at the level of your DNA, vaccinations, physical health and microscopic well-being, you are already familiar with it.

Melissa Fay Green, author of “A Prayer to Drywall” and “There Is No Me Without You”

Rebecca Skloot's heartbreaking and compellingly nuanced work chronicles the timeless and deeply personal sacrifice of this African-American woman and her family, and ultimately puts a human face on the cell line that gave birth to 20th-century biomedicine. A stunning example of how race, gender and illness came together to create a unique form of social vulnerability. A poignant, necessary and magnificent book.

Alondra Nelson, Columbia University; Editor of Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life

Rebecca Skloot has written an amazing book, so original that it cannot be described in a few words. We follow a surreal journey as the cells that belonged to Henrietta Lacks' body occupy a vital place in science. And at the same time we learn the story of Henrietta and her family, struggling with the adversities of the late twentieth century in America, and all this with a lot of detail, wise and humane. The more you read, the clearer it becomes that these are not two separate stories, but a common pattern. It's such a mixture of "The Wire" and "The Lives of a Cage" and it's delicious.

Carl Zimmer, author of Microcosm

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings to mind the works of Philip K. Dick and Edgar Allan Poe. However, this story is true. Rebecca Skloot explores the envy and racism, idealism and faith in science that helped save thousands of lives at the cost of nearly wiping out one family. Amazing book, captivating and beautifully told story.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

It's rare for a reporter's passion to find its way into a story. Rarer still are the characters in a story who courageously join a reporter in his search for the truth that almost all of us need to know about ourselves. When this happens to a decent journalist and a sincere writer in one person, whose heart is capable of absorbing all the joys and troubles of life, it means that the stars have taken a favorable position. This is an amazing gift of writing, delightful and beautiful, and the book itself is an outstanding literary report. Read! For many years to come, this will be the best book you will find.

Adrian Nicole Leblanc, author of the book “An Ordinary Family”

Written with the skill of a novelist, the intimate knowledge of biology, and the enthusiasm of an inquisitive reporter, Skloot's book tells a truly astonishing story of racism and poverty, science and conscience, spirituality and family; a story revealed through a lively exploration of bodily integrity and the very nature of life force.

Booklist, review of the most popular books

No one can accurately name the burial place of Henrietta Lacks: over the many years that Rebecca Skloot worked on this book, even the Lacks’ hometown of Clover in Virginia disappeared from the face of the earth. However, this did not shake Skloot’s desire to find and resurrect her heroine and her family. This inspiring book reveals frankly the ease with which science can cause harm, especially to the poor. There are huge issues at stake here: who owns our bodies, the abuse of medical power, the abuses of slavery... and Skloot, with her characteristic clarity and deep compassion, helps us see the whole picture. These are the kinds of stories books should tell—exhaustive, detailed, passionate, and full of revelations.

Ted Conover, author of Newjack and the Ways of Man

Authors, illustrators and translators of the book

Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Skloot is the author of scholarly articles that have appeared in The New York Times, Oh, The Oprah Magazine, The Columbia Press Review, and other publications. She is the winner of several awards. Teaches creative documentary at the University of Memphis. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is her first book.