Ieok Cheng, Chang (Celia)
ARS390
09/14/2020
Presentation — Henrietta Lacks (HeLa Cells)
Link to the presentation slides: Presentation1
In the 1950s, there was an African-American woman called Henrietta Lacks. Her husband and her were poor farmers growing tobacco for a living. When she was pregnant with her fifth child, she found out that she had some vaginal bleeding, together with some pain. She wanted to go to the hospital, however, growing up in an impoverished family, she had no time and money to go to the hospital. But then she found that the Johns Hopkins Hospital provides free treatment for impoverished blacks, so she decided to start the treatment. After checking her body, the doctors found out that Lacks was already in the advanced stage of cervical cancer, but the symp
While the looking of the cells of ordinary cervical cancer would show the state of genital warts (looking like cauliflowers), the cells of the cervical cancer of Lacks looks smooth and they are like little purple grapes. These abnormal symptoms caught the doctor George Gey’s attention. At that time, doctor Gey took a part of her tissue and put them into a test tube which is able to store and continue making the cells grow. He then wrote down her initials on the test tube, “HeLa Cells,” which then became the official name of her cells. After storing her cells in a test tube, doctor Gey observed the changing and features of the cells. What he didn’t expect was that the HeLa Cells has astonishing vitality – It grows very fast, at a rate that doubles every 24 hours, and this is the first feature that makes HeLa cells magical. The second magical, and the most important feature of HeLa cells is that they can keep splitting. When normal cells could only divide about 50 times, HELA cells are able to split endlessly as long as there is a good, nutritious environment.
“Lacks is not immortal, but her cancer cells are immortal,” Although Hela cells that have cancer in her body grow so fast that they quickly took her life away, her cells have stayed and have contributed a lot to the medical field. Since the appearance of Hela Cells, it has become an important tool for medical research; and her cells rapidly multiplied in laboratories around the world.
The first important contribution she makes to the medical research is that scientists developed a vaccine for polio based on her cells. In the winter (the same year) of her death, a huge polio outbreak happened in the US. Scientists at that time thought that they could use the polio-causing virus to infect HeLa Cells. And they were pleasantly surprised by the fact that these viruses are easy to survive in HeLa Cells. Then, based on the changes in the HeLa Cells after being infected, the scientists found a breakthrough and they developed a vaccine for polio. Today, the polio vaccine has prevented more than 65 million deaths.
Besides studying diseases, scientists have also conducted many experiments on HeLa Cells. When scientists invented a method to separate single cells in the 1950s, they successfully cloned (copied) HeLa cells, and this is the first time that humans have successfully cloned a cell. The clone technologies in the future, Dolly, for example, are all based on the experiment of cloning HeLa cells.
If HeLa cells were not discovered, what will medical science look like now?
Firstly, HeLa cells are one of the most important cell lines in medical research. If HeLa cells were not discovered, medical science would be much behind now. Secondly, We would still be plagued by many diseases if we don’t have HeLa Cells. Imagining if HeLa cells did not exist, the scientists were not able to develop a vaccine for polio. Finally, if HeLa cells were not discovered, the clone technology would be delayed or even we would not be able to clone by now.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
https://scitechvista.nat.gov.tw/c/sK4a.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSpAnDmI_tk&t=308s