The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Bittersweet Legacy The tumour that killed her also revolutionised medical research. Liz Hunt reveals the extraordinary story of Henrietta Lacks. Researchers experiment on human cells. The HeLa strain of cells revolutionised medical science, but Henrietta Lacks' own story was a sad one. Photo: EPA By Liz Hunt 9:47PM BST 21 Jun 2010 As an undergraduate I was soon familiar with HeLa cells. Few pharmacology lecturers delivered their spiel without referring to their crucial role in drug development and toxicity testing. I recall stacks of Petri dishes labelled “HeLa…” in refrigerators at the London School of Pharmacy labs. Later, in hospital pharmacies, I dispensed treatments for herpes, leukaemia, influenza, Parkinson’s disease and haemophilia that might never have come into being without this ubiquitous cell line. But I never once wondered about its origin. Then I saw a BBC documentary, The Way of All Flesh, first shown in 1997, which went some way to uncovering the story behind HeLa cells and the African-American woman after whom they are named. Now a new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, has fleshed out fully Lacks’s story, detailing how her death from cervical cancer in October 1951 “changed medical science for ever”. Until this point, it had proved impossible to grow human cells in culture in the laboratory for any length of time. And without a ready supply of human cells to investigate and experiment on – experiments that could never be performed on an individual – progress in understanding how the body worked and in treating disease was frustratingly slow. However, cells removed from the tumour on Lacks’s cervix, taken routinely but without consent during an examination, proved the exception. Quite simply, these cells –
Transcript
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Bittersweet Legacy
The tumour that killed her also revolutionised medical research. Liz Hunt
reveals the extraordinary story of Henrietta Lacks.
Researchers experiment on human cells. The HeLa strain of cells revolutionised
medical science, but Henrietta Lacks' own story was a sad one. Photo: EPA
By Liz Hunt
9:47PM BST 21 Jun 2010
As an undergraduate I was soon familiar with HeLa cells. Few pharmacology lecturers delivered their
spiel without referring to their crucial role in drug development and toxicity testing. I recall stacks of
Petri dishes labelled “HeLa…” in refrigerators at the London School of Pharmacy labs. Later, in hospital
pharmacies, I dispensed treatments for herpes, leukaemia, influenza, Parkinson’s disease and
haemophilia that might never have come into being without this ubiquitous cell line. But I never once
wondered about its origin.
Then I saw a BBC documentary, The Way of All Flesh, first shown in 1997, which went some way to
uncovering the story behind HeLa cells and the African-American woman after whom they are named.
Now a new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, has fleshed out fully Lacks’s
story, detailing how her death from cervical cancer in October 1951 “changed medical science for ever”.
Until this point, it had proved impossible to grow human cells in culture in the laboratory for any length
of time. And without a ready supply of human cells to investigate and experiment on – experiments that
could never be performed on an individual – progress in understanding how the body worked and in
treating disease was frustratingly slow. However, cells removed from the tumour on Lacks’s cervix, taken
routinely but without consent during an examination, proved the exception. Quite simply, these cells –
called HeLa following the convention of using the first two letters of a patient’s first name and surname –
were phenomenal. They reproduced an entire generation every 24 hours, becoming the “first immortal
human cells” – a continuously dividing line of cells from one original sample – ever grown in a laboratory.
Samples were soon being distributed and were multiplying in laboratories worldwide. It was the dawn of
human tissue culture research. Yes, the HeLa cells were cancerous but they had the characteristics of
healthy human cells. They divided, generated energy, “communicated” with one another, produced
proteins, expressed and regulated genes. They were also vulnerable to hormones and toxins, could be
frozen and irradiated; they would be the first cells ever cloned and contain some of the first genes ever
mapped. “HeLa was a workhorse: it was hardy, it was inexpensive, and it was everywhere,” writes Skloot.
A New York Times best-seller, Skloot’s book has ignited a debate in America about ethics, race, issues of
consent and the exploitation of patients. The discovery of the unique properties of HeLa cells led to the
creation of a billion dollar industry. In 2009, the US Patent and Trademark Office had some 11,000
patents logged involving HeLa. In contrast, Lacks’s family, three sons and a daughter (another daughter
died in a hospital for the “negro insane”), lived in hardship, some of them unable to afford health care.
Henrietta Lacks is central to this story and recognition of her contribution to medical science is long
overdue. It is shameful that, until last month, her grave in the town of Clover, Virginia, was unmarked.
But there are other protagonists in the saga, brilliant, pioneering scientists and doctors, and their
contribution is at risk of being lost in the politically correct rush to focus on the “exploitation” of Lacks
and her family. Conduct in a less enlightened era, when patient consent was not a requirement, is being
judged by the standards of today and found wanting. But none of us would have benefited from the
Lacks legacy were it not for those working at the frontiers of medical research.
Richard Wesley TeLinde is one of them. A surgeon at Johns Hopkins, he was then a controversial figure in
cervical cancer management. There are two types of cervical cancer: invasive carcinomas, which have
penetrated the surface of the cervix, and non-invasive carcinomas or “sugar-icing carcinoma”, which
grow across the surface. The consensus was that the invasive form must be treated aggressively, but the
sugar-icing variety posed no long-term risk.
TeLinde was convinced that the “benign” form was a precursor of the invasive type, and that thousands
of women were dying as a result of the failure to treat it. He would often remove the cervix, uterus and
parts of the vagina in his patients – “extreme and unnecessary” treatment in the view of others.
Determined to prove he was right, he embarked on a study to show that women with invasive cervical
cancer had previously had non-invasive carcinoma. It was because of this study, and the need for cell
samples, that a doctor took a sliver of Lacks’s tumour.
Another key figure in the story is George Gey, head of tissue culture research at Hopkins. He had been
working for more than 20 years trying to grow cancer cells outside the body to determine the cause of
the disease and find a cure. A maverick genius, he invented the “roller tube” culturing technique by
which growing cells were bathed by fluids in constant motion, just as they were in the body.
Previously, all the tissue taken from TeLinde’s patients had died in the lab. No one expected the Lacks
cells to be any different. When they proved unique, Gey told colleagues, who asked for samples. Soon,
he was shipping HeLa cells all over the States and to Europe, free of charge, advising his peers on how to
grow them.
Within months of Lacks’s death, plans for a HeLa “factory” were under way. The stimulus was the
worldwide epidemic of polio (infantile paralysis). In February 1952, Jonas Salk at Pittsburgh University
had developed a vaccine, but testing it for safety and efficacy required culturing cells on an industrial
scale, something that had never been achieved before. When, two months later, Gey, working with a
young researcher, William Scherer in Minnesota, found that HeLa cells were susceptible to the polio
virus, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis lost no time in initiating a cell production scheme
that resulted in the mass production of the vaccine.
The availability of HeLa cells would lead to huge advances in medical research, according to Skloot. In
1953, a “lucky accident” by a geneticist in Texas working with HeLa cells enabled scientists to see human
chromosomes for the first time; in 1965 two British scientists created the first human-animal hybrid cells
using HeLa and mouse cells; in 1978, Louise Brown, the first “test-tube” baby, was born using techniques
derived from the early cell culture techniques developed using HeLa; and in the Eighties, as Aids was
generating fearful headlines, molecular biologist Richard Axel managed to infect HeLa cells with HIV, a
major advance in understanding the virus.
However, it wasn’t until more than 30 years after Henrietta Lacks’s death that HeLa cells were
instrumental in determining the cause of her cancer. A German virologist, Harald zur Hausen, discovered
a new strain of Human Papilloma Virus HPV-18, which he believed caused cervical cancer. A sample of
Lacks’s original biopsy showed that she had been infected with multiple copies of what would turn out to
be one of the most virulent strains of HPV. Working with HPV in HeLa and other cells led scientists to a
vaccine for cervical cancer and earned zur Hausen a Nobel prize.
No doubt more discoveries and advances in which HeLa cells play a role lie ahead. And yet Skloot
acknowledges that a fundamental mystery remains: no one can explain why Henrietta’s cells were able
to grow so powerfully outside her body. Perhaps we will never know – but should just be grateful they
