Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells, called HeLa, are used around the world for medical experiments.
Credit: © Pictorial Press Ltd, Alamy Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

A mother and a medical marvel with a lasting legacy, Henrietta Lacks has saved nearly 10 million lives. Lacks was an African American woman born in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1, 1920. Lacks unknowingly became a donor of a line of cells widely used in medical research. Those cells, known as HeLa cells, became one of the most important advances in medical science. HeLa stands for Henrietta Lacks. Lacks only lived 31 years, but her cells are still alive today.

Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant. She later changed her name to Henrietta and married David Lacks in 1941. The couple moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1940’s. In 1951, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She died on October 4 of that year, leaving behind her five children. Before her death, doctors removed a sample of cancer cells during a medical examination. The sample was taken without her knowledge.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University used the sample to establish the HeLa cell culture. A cell culture is a population of cells grown under controlled conditions for research. The usefulness of cell cultures is often limited because the cells die after a certain number of divisions. However, the HeLa cells divided indefinitely without dying.

HeLa cells grow faster than other cell cultures. They survive shipment by mail, enabling them to be sent to laboratories around the world. The unique qualities of HeLa cells led to many scientific discoveries and a greater understanding of biological processes. One of the first uses of HeLa cells was to test the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine for the disease polio. HeLa cells have also contributed to treatments for Parkinson’s, HIV, and AIDS, as well as vaccines for the flu, HPV, and COVID-19. Her cells have been used in nearly 75,000 studies.

The World Health Organization honored Henrietta Lacks in 2021. The city of Roanoke, Virginia, is replacing a statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee with a bronze statue of Lacks. Nearly 72 years after her death, Lacks will be memorialized in her hometown for years to come. Author Rebecca Skloot wrote about Henrietta’s life and her medical contribution in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks released in 2010. The story was adapted into a movie in 2017 starring Oprah Winfrey.

HeLa cells were also used to produce the first cellular clones. Cellular clones are a group of cells descended from a single cell. They are genetically identical, enabling scientists to study entire populations of cells with a particular genetic trait.

HeLa cells remain an essential tool in laboratories throughout the world. They have been used to develop drugs and other therapies worth billions of dollars. However, Henrietta Lacks and her family received no compensation for the use of her cells. In medical ethics, her case is often cited as a classic example of failure to obtain informed consent from a tissue donor. Informed consent means that participants fully understand and accept the known risks and possible benefits of a medical procedure. Today, researchers regularly obtain consent from patients before taking tissue samples.

In 2013, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH), a government agency that conducts and supports a broad range of biomedical research, made a historic agreement with the surviving family of Henrietta Lacks. NIH researchers must now obtain permission from a special review panel before they can view and use detailed genetic information of HeLa cells. Members of the Lacks family are included on the review panel. NIH also requested that researchers studying HeLa cells include an acknowledgment to the Lacks family when the research is published.

October 7, 2013

American scientists James E. Rothman of Yale University and Randy W. Schekman of the University of California at Berkeley shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with German-born biologist Thomas Sudhof of Stanford University for  discoveries showing how insulin and other vital materials are transported and delivered to targets within and between cells of the body. This extremely precise transport system is essential for health.

Cells differ greatly in size and shape and in the jobs they do. But all cells have certain features, and each cell can be thought of as a tiny chemical factory. It has a control center that tells it what to do and when. It has power plants for generating the energy it needs to function, and it has machinery for making needed products or performing essential services. Within each cell, a transportation control system ensures that necessary substances are delivered to the right place at the right time and so prevents the cellular factory from breaking down.

Working separately, the three scientists investigated the networks of tiny cavities, called vesicles, that transport materials within and sometimes between individual cells of the body. Rothman studied the various proteins that enable vesicles to deliver such necessary substances as hormones or enzymes to the appropriate target within the cell. Schekman identified the genes that control the cellular transport system. Similar genes are found in all animals, from simple yeast to human beings. Sudhof studied how chemical signals from nerve cells instruct vesicles to release the substances they contain. Such signaling is necessary so that the thousands of complex reactions that take place in the body occur in a precise manner.

The three scientists’ research offers many practical medical applications. Disturbances in the cell’s internal transport system are thought to play a role in diabetes and various neurological and immune system disorders.

Additional World Book article:

• Nobel, Alfred Bernhard

October 10, 2012

American scientists Robert J. Lefkowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Brian K. Kobilka of Stanford University in Stanford, California, were awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry. They received the prize for their research on structures that allow living cells to sense and respond to chemical messages in their environment.

The human body is composed of many millions of cells organized into tissues, organs, and organ systems. In order to function, the cells must be able to sense and respond to stimuli and to communicate so they can work together. Lefkowitz and Kobilka studied structures called G-protein-coupled receptors that are found on nearly all cells in the human body. These receptors detect chemical messengers, including hormones, neurotransmitters, and drugs, so particular cells can react appropriately. The receptors are also an important component of the senses that detect light, odor, and flavor. Scientists had long known that these receptors were made up of so-called G-proteins, but they did not understand how they interacted.

Lefkowitz began his research by studying the effects of a hormone called adrenalin (also called epinephrine). Adrenalin stimulates the heart and relaxes muscles in the small air passages in the lungs. Doctors use it to treat severe allergic reactions and to restore a heartbeat in patients who are suffering cardiac arrest. Lefkowitz tagged chemical substances that affect adrenalin receptors by attaching a radioactive molecule to the substance. He could then see exactly how the molecules interacts with the receptors on the surface of targeted cells.

Drugs and other chemical messengers attach to receptor molecules on cells. (World Book diagram)

Kobilka joined Lefkowitz and began work to understand the genes that control the structure of the receptor and how it interacts with the messenger chemical. In 2011, the scientists were able to visualize and describe the steps at the exact moment when a hormone from outside a cell transfers a signal to the G-protein-coupled receptor inside of the cell.

Scientists have known for decades that up to half of all drugs act through such receptors on cells, though they have not understood exactly how the receptors function. The discoveries by Lefkowitz and Kobilka have been extremely valuable to scientists as they work to develop better drugs to combat such diseases as cancer and diabetes.

Additional World Book articles:

• Immune system
• Nervous system