Henrietta Lacks died from an aggressive form of cervical cancer in 1951 (Picture: AP/BBC Picture Archives)
The DNA of a black woman which helped create the Covid vaccine and is considered ‘the mother of modern medicine’ is ‘finally getting the recognition deserved’.
Henrietta Lacks, from Virginia, US, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer 1951.
She died just months after her diagnosis at the age of 31, and buried in an unmarked grave.
Before her death doctors sent a sample of Mrs Lacks’s tumor to a lab to figure out what treatment was needed.
But scientists found her cell cultures did not die quickly in the lab like others do.
They instead became ‘immortal’ as they continued to multiply and did not age.
Extracts of the cell line, which has been called HeLa, have since been sent around the world, and has become ‘the foundation’ of medical research.
The World Health organisation said the cells helped create the polio vaccine and advanced HIV, cancer and infertility research.
Henrietta and husband David Lacks (Picture: AP)
The research on cervical cancer which stemmed from the HeLa cell line would have been able to prolong Mrs Lacks’s life.
Dr Maninder Ahluwalia, senior lecturer in Biomedical Sciences at Cardiff Metropolitan University, told Metro: ‘We would be no where without Henrietta Lacks. More than 100,000 publications, 17,000 patents and two Nobel prizes have come from these cells.
‘The cells were taken in 1951 and they have been growing ever since. They were first used to help create the Polio vaccine.
‘A lot of biomedical research has come from
But some have argued Mrs Lacks was ‘exploited’ at the end of her life.
Her family reached a settlement of an unknown amount with a biotech company Thermo Fisher in August.
‘The family only found out Mrs Lacks’s cells were being used when they were contacted about providing more blood samples,’ Dr Ahluwalia said.
‘Big companies and research groups would have earnt huge amounts of money – it is a multi-biollion dollar industry.
Henrietta’s family has now received a settlement (Picture: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
‘But Mrs Lacks and her family were living in extreme poverty while ompanies were making billions of dollars.
‘We will never be able give her back what she deserves.’
Two of Mrs Lacks’s descendants now sit on the US National Institute of Health which grants permission to access the HeLa sequence information.
‘The HeLa cell has informed the ethics around human sampling and consent,’ Dr Ahluwalia said.
‘We should take human samples because we have learnt so much, every sample leads us to new discoveries – but we need to take it ethical and with informed consent and recognise the donor.
‘If we do things correctly and morally, we will be able to move forward.’
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‘We will never be able give her back what she deserves.’
