About 65 years ago, dead woman's cancer cells still divide

Cancer cells taken 65 years ago are still growing
65 years ago, US farm worker Henrietta Lacks died of cancer. Her death led to a medical sensation. A doctor had taken the patient's cells and passed them to a laboratory. To date, these tissue samples are the basis for hundreds of scientists around the world.
Tissue samples taken 65 years ago
In early 1951, the young American Henrietta Lacks went with a stinging abdominal pain in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Only eight months later, the African American woman was dead. She died of cervical cancer. As the news agency dpa reports, her treating physician, Howard Jones, later wrote: "This tumor was different than any other. It was as big as a coin, very purple and soft, but these tumors are usually hard. "The physician took his patient on February 8, 65 years ago, cells and passed them to the laboratory of his colleague George Otto Gey.

Cells are still growing today
Gey, who was working at the Johns Hopkins Hospital at the time, put the tissue sample in a mixture of chicken plasma, an extract of veal embryo and umbilical cord blood, and put it in a refrigerator. On the container of cells came initial letters of the patient: "HeLa". It is said that he expected the tissue to die soon, as no one had managed to keep human cells alive in the lab for more than a few weeks. But the cells are still growing today. Soon it will be millions: the first human cells ever to multiply in a laboratory and have survived for more than a few days.

Family of the dead was not informed
Elisabeth Schwarz, a biologist at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, said in the dpa report: "In the history of research this occupies a leading position, it was a scientific sensation." From then on - for the first time in history Medicine - be extensively researched on human cells. However, dealing with HeLa cells was extremely problematic for Ms. Lacks' family. Her husband David fought for the rights to the remains of his wife until his death in 2002. Although the cells of the impoverished woman earned billions of dollars, her relatives did not know about it for a long time and did not receive compensation or anything like that for a long time. In 2013, the family finally agreed with the American Institute of Health (NIH).

Standard in every laboratory
Gey had sent HeLa cells to labs around the world. Since then, scientists have been mixing their new research object with the cells of mice and chickens to analyze the effects of cancer, polio and AIDS. In the meantime, HeLa is also being researched in molecular and cell biology. The cells have become the standard in every laboratory - to this day. As Black explained, there are now hundreds of other cell lines. The very first one is still in demand. "HeLa cells grow unproblematically, and they are very robust. One cell splits in 24 hours, with other cell lines it takes much longer. "However, researchers still can not say why these cells grow so robustly.

Tumor was the basis for the vaccine against it
It has been estimated that around 50 tonnes of HeLa cells have been bred to date, and around 11,000 patents worldwide are registered to include such cells, and more than 74,000 medical studies around the world may have benefited from HeLa cells. Of course, also in Germany: Here, the longtime chairman of the DKFZ, Harald zur Hausen, made his most spectacular discovery on HeLa cells. The scientist found the papillomaviruses HPV16 and 18 in it and wondered if the genetic material of the virus plays a role in the development of the tumor. It finally turned out that the viruses can be the cause of a tumor. Then a vaccine was developed and received the Hausen 2008, the Nobel Prize for Medicine. The cells of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer decades ago, were the basis for a vaccine against this cancer. (Ad)