Tomorrow marks the anniversary of Henrietta Lacks’ birth. To many, this name might be unfamiliar, but for researchers all over the world, it is not. Four letters, taken from her first and last names: HeLa. Every time a scientist places HeLa cells under a microscope or starts a new in vitro culture, they are unknowingly touching a piece of her story.

Born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia, Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman and mother of five who lived in an era characterized by racial segregation and healthcare inequality. In 1951, at just 31 years old, she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, one of the few hospitals at the time that treated African American patients, because of persistent pain and bleeding. The diagnosis: cervical cancer, she died eight months later.

Without her consent or her family’s, doctors collected some of her tumor cells during a biopsy. Unlike all other cells grown in vitro, which died as expected, her cells (having 82 chromosomes instead of 46) continued to proliferate indefinitely, essentially becoming immortal. Thus, the first human cell line was born: the HeLa cells, named after Henrietta Lacks.

I searched on PubMed and it turned out the first full scientific paper describing the use of HeLa cells was published in May 1953:

“Tissue from an epidermoid carcinoma of the human cervix was placed in roller tube cultures on February 8, 1951, with result in a strain of malignant epithelial ceils described as strain HeLa. The author (G. G.) who first cultivated this strain of cells maintained it by serial transfer through 30 cultural passages between February 8, 1951, and May 31, 1952, when cultures of these cells were sent to Minneapolis to serve as source materialfor the establishment of stock cultures of strain HeLa cells at the University of Minnesota” (1, taken from M&M).

However, the first documented mention of HeLa cells was in a conference abstract from 1952.

Since then, those cells revolutionized modern medicine enabling millions of in-vitro experiments and contributed to groundbreaking discoveries such as the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, AIDS and virus studies (including COVID-19), and many more.

Yet Henrietta never knew. Neither she nor her family received recognition or compensation for decades. The HeLa cells were commercialized and distributed worldwide , while her family lived in poverty for years without access to healthcare.

To remember Henrietta Lacks today and beyond is to honor a life transformed into progress for all humanity.

Nowadays, thanks to pap tests for early diagnosis of HPV and to the vaccines, the virus responsible for many cases of cervical cancer is less common or detected at an early stage. Prevention has proven to be an increasingly powerful tool. As a result, cervical cancer is now less frequent, at least in Western countries. But in Henrietta Lacks’ time, all of this was still far from reality.

Reference:

1. SCHERER WF, SYVERTON JT, GEY GO. Studies on the propagation in vitro of poliomyelitis viruses. IV. Viral multiplication in a stable strain of human malignant epithelial cells (strain HeLa) derived from an epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix. J Exp Med. 1953 May;97(5):695-710. doi: 10.1084/jem.97.5.695.

Giuseppe Cappellano