A few years ago, a book called "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot was published. It was a follow-up to a Reader's Digest article from some time ago. The book brought the importance of HeLa cells into the. Public consciousness and is currently being made into a movie by Oprah Winfrey.
Mrs. Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman living in a working-class section of Baltimore. Just before her youngest child Deborah was born, Mrs. Lacks felt what she described as a knot inside her. After Deborah's birth, Doctors at Johns Hopkins University medical center discovered a very aggressive form of cervical cancer. Doctors attempted to remove the cancer and treated Mrs. Lacks with radiation. She died in October of 1951.

After Mrs. Lacks' surgery, a biopsy of the tumor was taken to the hospital's tissue lab. The lab had been struggling for years to develop a line of cells that would survive and divide in culture so that cells could be studied. When the cells from Mrs. Lacks' tumor arrived, they attempted to culture them, but expected to fail as they had before. To everyone's surprise, the cells began to divide every 24hours. They became excited, named the cells HeLa to protect Mrs. Lacks' identity, and let other scientists know that they had a sustainable cell tissue culture line. Initially, the head of the cell culture lab, Dr. Gey sent HeLa cells to scientists around the country free of charge so that cells could be studied.
This discovery changed cell science and medicine forever.

So what made HeLa cells grow? Scientists know that cervical cancer is caused by a virus, HPV. Viruses like HPV inject their DNA into the host cell when they infect it. The viral DNA is then inserted in a random location into the host cell's chromosome. In the case of HeLa cells, scientists think that the HPV randomly inserted its genes into the right spot in Mrs. Lacks' chromosome to stimulate cell growth and division.
From the adjacent slide, you can see that HeLa cells are used for all kinds of research. Here are some important breakthroughs in biotech that we couldn't have withou HeLa cells:
1. A polio vaccine-remember Dr. Jonas Salk? He tested his vaccine on HeLa cells
2. Gardisil-the new HPV vaccine that all adolescents should get was developed by studying HeLa cells
3. Your MMR vaccine-this is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine that you had before kindergarten. It too was tested on HeLa cells
4. Understanding of TB, HIV, HPV-HeLa cells have been used to understand how these diseases impact cells
5. Human chromosome number and mitosis-scientists used HeLa cells to determine the exact number of chromosomes in human cells and to study the events of cell division.
6. In vitro fertilization-HeLa cells were used to develop a technique for making babies in a lab and implanting them into the mother later.
7. Zero gravity tests-HeLa cells have been taken into space to study the impact of zero gravity on cell growth.
This is just a short list. There are lots more discoveries linked to HeLa cells. One only needs to see how many patents involve these cells to understand how important they are!