In a remarkable turn of events, the aggressive cervical cancer tumor that killed 31-year-old African American mother Henrietta Lacks ended up playing a crucial role in the biomedical field’s success during the 20th century. Even I, a cancer researcher who employs HeLa cells in my daily work, find it difficult to believe at times.
More than 70 years after Lacks’ cells were taken by doctors without her knowledge or consent, her family and the biotech company Thermo Fisher settled on August 1, 2023. In 2021, the company was sued by Lacks’ descendants for profiting billions of dollars from her cells. The family has never received payment before.
The first two letters of Lacks’ first and last names, “HeLa,” refer to her immortal cervical cancer cells, which divide even after most cells would have died. They are extremely valuable to scientists working with human cells because of their capacity to endure countless generations of cells.
The significance of HeLa cells
Prior to HeLa cells, researchers sought a means of cultivating and examining human cells in the laboratory for research projects that are not feasible to carry out on living subjects. Scientists’ capacity to conduct research was expanded when Lacks’ cervical cancer cells were successfully grown in a petri dish in 1951. This provided them with a source of easily manipulated and reasonably priced cells. HeLa cells have been crucial to numerous scientific breakthroughs and discoveries, ranging from the development of COVID-19 and polio vaccines to cancer research and the sequencing of the human genome.
Because these cells were removed from Henrietta Lacks during a routine cervical cancer biopsy and given to researchers without her consent—as was customary at the time—the story of Henrietta Lacks is also an ongoing bioethics case. For a long time, the Lacks family has tried to take businesses to court for allegedly unfairly benefiting from Henrietta Lacks’ cells. Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 book describes in detail how the Lacks family and science were impacted by HeLa cells.
However, how did Lacks’ cells acquire immortality?
Lacks was unaware that the human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the virus that causes one of the most prevalent STDs, to infect the cells in her cervix. Only a small percentage of the more than 150 distinct HPV types are known to cause cervical cancer. As a matter of fact, HPV is present in 99.7% of cervical cancer cases. Thankfully, the majority of individuals with high-risk HPV infections are able to eradicate the virus before it manifests as cancer. More than 90% of cancers linked to HPV can be prevented with vaccinations. However, cervix HPV infections account for 10% of cancer cases. Henrietta was, regrettably, one of the unfortunate ones.
Two proteins
It turns out that the virus produces two proteins that are linked to its ability to cause cancer. Two important human proteins that prevent cancer, p53 and retinoblastoma (Rb), are both targets of these viral proteins. In order to prevent cells from accumulating dangerous genetic mutations and from dividing beyond a certain number of cycles, P53 and Rb function as sentinels. My studies have concentrated on the interactions between HPV proteins and proteins that suppress tumor growth in various human cell types, such as HeLa.
The majority of cells divide 40–60 times on average before they age too much and naturally die off. However, HPV can cause cells to divide indefinitely because it targets the sentinels that prevent unchecked cell division. Following her infection with HPV 18, the second most prevalent high-risk strain of the virus, Lacks’ cervical cells were unable to generate these sentinels. Without growth controls, her cells were able to proliferate endlessly and turn “immortal,” continuing to exist today in test tubes and the 70,000 research they have enabled.
