Henrietta Lacks -The first immortal?

Several book reviews this week have covered "The immortal life of Henrietta lacks " such as this one in the New York Times. I was astonished to learn the origin of probably the most famous human cell line, HeLa, through these reviews Even I, a plant scientist, have heard of them and regularly, enviously, read papers based on their research. HeLa stands for Henrietta Lacks, the unfortunate black woman from whom these cancerous cells were taken. Henrietta died in 1951 and her race was an integral part of the circumstances of her death and the immortality of the her cells. As I have not yet read the book I cannot comment on Henrietta's life, but I can describe the impact that her cells have on me.

Cell culture, that is the growth of individual cells in a nutrient broth, are an invaluable research tool. As the cells divide and grow continuously they are known as "immortal". Of course individual cells cannot cover the complexity of an organism with many different cell types and tissues (eyes muscles skin etc.) But as their growth conditions can be tightly controled to suit experiments, for example by adding drugs the all hormones to the growth media, they provide material for testing that cannot be done on the entire organisms. Furthermore, cell cultures have done more than any other technique to replace experiments on animals. Some types of cells do not grow well and only survive for a few weeks but HeLa cells have now survived for decades. This is perhaps an alarming measure of the malignancy of Henrietta's cancer. By the way, plant cells can also be grown in cell culture and a few can survive as long.

HeLa cells were one of the first products of what are now multinational pharmaceutical companies and have been used for research beyond that of human cancer. I first became aware of a HeLa cells through work on signaling pathways (i.e. receptor proteins), in particular those experiments using special forms of amino acids to determine changes that occur after receptor proteins have been elicited (triggered). It is really astounding to consider how far medical research has changed from the 1950s when the cancer cells were taken from Henrietta. Doubtless she would be astounded, and perhaps horrified, to learn of the fate of her cells. But I hope that she would also be amazed at the progress. It is shameful that the debt medical research goes to her, and by extension her family, is as yet unpaid.

The special forms of amino acids, I mentioned above, are made extra heavy at the atomic level through incorporation of stable isotopes (naturally occurring heavy forms of atoms i.e. C13 rather than C12 and N15 rather than N14). I am amazed that we can manipulate atoms and molecules at this level and delighted that one can simply order these custom made molecules from a pharmaceutical company: I feel future-shocked. So, to set up a cutting edge experiment on human cells one can simply order or borrow a HeLa cell line and custom amino acids and make light and have the forms of the cells. One can then treat or not two batches of the cells and go and look for differences. Could Henrietta be a real-life Cold Lazarus?

And as for the effect that HeLa cell research has had on me, well it has been truly inspirational. Plant science lags behind mammalian research on the finer details of signaling pathways, and I would love to obtain the same a level of detail that has been achieved for the egf pathway using HeLa cells. So far I had written two grants to try and achieve this and will shortly be writing my third. So results from human cell line research has played a crucial role in steering the course of my own career.