Now that the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is less only a few days away, it is time to get into the right mood for the meeting. One of the best ways of doing that is reading a good science book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot is such a book. The book was published earlier this year, and the German translation will be available in September.
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer. But a few months before she died, her treating physicians at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took a tissue sample of her tumor and gave it to pathologist George Gey. Until then, nobody was able to maintain human cells in tissue culture. But the cells from Henrietta's tumor started to grow in the culture dishes, and as HeLa cells became not only the first, but also one of the most widely used human cell lines for biomedical research. Henrietta Lacks was not asked for permission, and her family only learned much later that cells from their dead mother were and still are used in many laboratories. Rebecca Skloot spent 10 years writting this fascinating book about Henrietta Lacks and her family, the history of research using HeLa cells, and the complicated relationship between the two. More information can be found at her website.
The list of scientific discoveries made with the help of HeLa cells is very long, and the book describes many of those around the world.
Rebecca Skloot has pointed out the crucial role HeLa played in the development of a polio vaccine in the 1950s. HeLa cells were also important in several discoveries of scientists that eventually led to Nobel Prizes, and several of these scientists will be at this year's Nobel Laureate Meeting.
In 2008 the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was shared by
Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer". Human Papilloma Virus 18 (HPV-18) is one of the major HPV strains causing cervical cancer. The
original 1984 description of HPV-18 found HPV-18 DNA not only in many cervical cancer biopsies, but also in HeLa cells. HPV-18 DNA was later also detected in the original tumor samples from Henrietta Lacks, clearly demonstrating that human papilloma virus was responsible for her cancer and untimely death at age 31.
In the same year the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded jointly to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie and Roger Y. Tsien "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP". As a widely used human cell line, HeLa was and still is used in many GFP experiments, e.g. in
this recent publication studying the cytoskeleton.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2004 was awarded jointly to Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose
"for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation". Avram Hershko was using
HeLa cell extracts to study protein degradation in vitro.
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2001 was shared by Leland H. Hartwell, Tim Hunt and Sir Paul M. Nurse
"for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle". In his
Nobel lecture Tim Hunt talked about the role that HeLa played in several important experiments that helped him understand the cell cycle.
With a little luck I might be able to hear more interesting HeLa stories from the scientists attending the Lindau Nobel meeting. One of the
most moving personal stories is by scientist and science blogger David Kroll.
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