Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Erin Welsh and I'm Aaron Allman Updike and.
Speaker 2: This is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, welcome everyone.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome this episode. I'm very excited about it because
Speaker 2: it's fair very different than our normal episodes.
Speaker 3: It's a very different I have can I be completely honest.
Speaker 3: I was really stressed out about it, say it has
Speaker 3: been so different than our normal episodes. But finally today
Speaker 3: as I was like organizing all my notes, I got
Speaker 3: really excited about it.
Speaker 2: Oh good, okay, good. I'm very excited to hear what
Speaker 2: you're gonna tell me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hope that you like it.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that I will, Erin, Come on, I'm very
Speaker 2: excited to learn all about what you're gonna tell me today, Erin,
Speaker 2: because I know very little about it. Well, and your
Speaker 2: nerves may have gone away, but mine are still here
Speaker 2: and I'm still nervous that I'm not going to do
Speaker 2: a good job. But you know what, just uh, it'll
Speaker 2: be okay.
Speaker 3: It's okay that we always feel that way and we
Speaker 3: just do our best.
Speaker 2: Erin, that's true, that's true, we do do our best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are we even talking about today?
Speaker 1: Aarin?
Speaker 3: I feel like the suspense has been building.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. We are talking today about Henrietta Lax,
Speaker 2: Henrietta Lax and her cells and her cells.
Speaker 4: You may have heard her name in your intro bio class,
Speaker 4: or in your cell bioclass, or maybe in your class
Speaker 4: on medical ethics.
Speaker 2: Maybe in the HBO movie that just came out. There
Speaker 2: are tons of different ways that you may have heard
Speaker 2: about Henrietta Lax, and we are going to kind of
Speaker 2: like try to cover a lot of those different ways
Speaker 2: or context in which you may have heard her name,
Speaker 2: including things like tissue culture and the ethics of informed consent,
Speaker 2: and also like who was Henrietta Lax?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the part I'm most excited about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. And there's a lot to cover. So
Speaker 2: maybe we should begin where we usually do.
Speaker 3: We should, which is always with a quarantiny.
Speaker 2: A quarantiny, Aaron, what are we drinking this week?
Speaker 3: This week we're drinking ambrosia. Ambrosia, drink of the gods
Speaker 3: that confers immortality.
Speaker 2: Immortality, and we will learn so much more about what
Speaker 2: immortal means. Oh, I'm really.
Speaker 3: Excited to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good, okay, But first, what is in ambrosia?
Speaker 3: Well, of course, being in the Midwest, ambrosia salad's like
Speaker 3: a Midwest thing, right.
Speaker 2: I think so? Or is it a Southern thing.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a Southern thing. I feel like I've seen
Speaker 3: it here. Anyways, it's rum and coconut cream, pineapple juice,
Speaker 3: orange juice, some grenadine. You blend it all up. So
Speaker 3: it's like an ambrosia salad in a glass with rum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I think it's going to be better than
Speaker 2: like the actual ambrosia fruit salad.
Speaker 3: I hope. So because I'm not a big fan.
Speaker 2: You mean you don't like mayonnaise with your fruit? Wait?
Speaker 3: Is it mayonnaise? I thought it was cool whip. Oh no,
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: Well it's not cool whip. It's actually sour cream. I
Speaker 2: oh okay, just like yeah, but I think you could
Speaker 2: also include mayonnaise or cottage cheese or yogurt or cream
Speaker 2: cheese or putting them on the Wikipedia page.
Speaker 3: I was like, are you looking at it? You're looking
Speaker 3: at a rescue right now. Oh well, anyways, we'll post
Speaker 3: the full recipe for that quarantine as well as our
Speaker 3: non alcoholic plusy berita on our website. This podcast will
Speaker 3: Kill You dot com and all of our social media channels.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, all right, what other business do we have
Speaker 2: to take care of? Well?
Speaker 3: As always, we have a good Reads list and a
Speaker 3: bookshop dot org link on our website. We also have
Speaker 3: merch by incredible artists on our website. We have links
Speaker 3: to transcripts. We have non alcoholic episodes. So much this
Speaker 3: podcast will kill you dot com.
Speaker 2: Oh, Aaron, good job everything. I was like, is there anything?
Speaker 2: I can't think of anything else?
Speaker 3: I think that's everything?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, okay in that case, shall we take
Speaker 2: a break and then get started. Let's do it.
Speaker 3: So, let's start with what a cell culture is, because
Speaker 3: a lot of people that aren't you, Aaron maybe have
Speaker 3: never used cell culture. So cell culture essentially just means
Speaker 3: growing cells. Any kind of cells could be human, could
Speaker 3: be other animals, could be bacteria, yeast, whatever, in some
Speaker 3: kind of artificial medium, like in a bottle or a
Speaker 3: petri dish something like that. So we have cell cultures
Speaker 3: of all different kinds of cells. In order to grow
Speaker 3: cells of pretty much any tissue type, you just need
Speaker 3: some basic environmental conditions, like a stable temperature, a nice
Speaker 3: pH some kind of substrate which might just be like
Speaker 3: a petri dish, and then you need growth media, which
Speaker 3: is just a fancy word for fluid or gel or
Speaker 3: something that has nutrients vitamins, salt, sugars so that cells
Speaker 3: can grow and thrive and reproduce. So the use of
Speaker 3: cell culture in biology at this point is so essential
Speaker 3: to the study of both basic science, like our basic
Speaker 3: understanding of cell biology, and also to applied clinical research.
Speaker 3: We use cell cultures to understand underlying cellular mechanisms that
Speaker 3: underlie all of life on planet Earth, but we also
Speaker 3: use them to study like new drugs to see if
Speaker 3: they're toxic to cells, to understand the effects of radiation
Speaker 3: or viruses or cancer on cell function. We use cell
Speaker 3: culture to grow viruses to make vaccines like the rabies
Speaker 3: vaccine or hepatitis or chicken pox vaccines. And we also
Speaker 3: use cell cultures for a ton of what are called biopharmaceuticals,
Speaker 3: which are things that cells produce that we can then
Speaker 3: use as drugs, like enzymes, proteins, antibodies that we use
Speaker 3: for cancer treatment or infectious disease treatment. We produce hormones,
Speaker 3: clotting factors, like so many things that people rely on
Speaker 3: every day are only possible because of cell culture.
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It's really it's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's like hard to overstate how basic they are, in
Speaker 2: like essential.
Speaker 3: Essential, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I used HeLa and mouse macrophage cells as an undergrad
Speaker 2: to study like these different proteins on plague bacteria to
Speaker 2: see which ones were involved in adhesion or invasion of
Speaker 2: the cells.
Speaker 3: That sounds incredible. My labs in my master's program, we
Speaker 3: used verro cells, which are from an African green monkey kidney,
Speaker 3: to test whether the viruses that we were finding in
Speaker 3: waste in seawater were infectious. Although I didn't do that
Speaker 3: because I could never keep my cells alive.
Speaker 2: I just remember being so fascinated by when I was
Speaker 2: doing these essays by making sure that like, oh, are
Speaker 2: the bacteria actually infecting these cells, and you would like
Speaker 2: put the flask under the scope and see everything. It
Speaker 2: was I couldn't believe what I was seeing that like
Speaker 2: this incredible process that you read about. It was just
Speaker 2: I still can't get over it.
Speaker 3: I can tell that you're getting little.
Speaker 2: Chills when I'm getting little chills.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Aarin in our kind of history section, you'll
Speaker 3: be going through the history of how HeLa cells which
Speaker 3: are the cells that were taken from Henrietta Lax without
Speaker 3: her permission and used and how big of an impact
Speaker 3: they've had on scientific knowledge. But the question that I
Speaker 3: want to answer in this section is why were Henrietta
Speaker 3: LAX's cells such a massive step forward in cell culture
Speaker 3: technology and what makes the cell lines that we use
Speaker 3: for cell culture today so different than what was used
Speaker 3: before HeLa.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, okay, I'm very excited.
Speaker 3: Oh my Tish, it's like, it's pretty cool. So before
Speaker 3: Henrietta Lxis cells were taken from her and became what
Speaker 3: we now know of as HeLa cells, scientists were still
Speaker 3: trying to grow mammalian and human cells from tissues, but
Speaker 3: they always died, and usually after a pretty short period
Speaker 3: of time, so you could run like one experiment and
Speaker 3: and then you'd have to harvest more tissue or more
Speaker 3: cells and start all over. So the reason that HeLa
Speaker 3: changed everything is because Henrietta Laxis cells didn't die. They
Speaker 3: kept growing and replicating and continue to do so today
Speaker 3: like seventy years later. And so Henrietta Laxis cells became
Speaker 3: what is known as a cell line, and a cell
Speaker 3: line essentially means cells from whatever humans or other animals, insects, plants, bacteria,
Speaker 3: from any tissue that can be grown in culture indefinitely.
Speaker 3: Why and how?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's first understand Henrietta laxis cells, the first
Speaker 3: cell line. These cells came from a sample of tissue
Speaker 3: from cervical cancer. And we already discussed in our HPV
Speaker 3: episode how cervical cancer develops as a result of HPV infection,
Speaker 3: so I'll just ever so briefly review that for anyone
Speaker 3: who didn't listen or forgot. We know that high risk
Speaker 3: HPV strains have a couple of different proteins E six
Speaker 3: and E seven that integrate into our genome, like get
Speaker 3: into our DNA and turn off a few genes called
Speaker 3: tumor suppressor genes. And what this does is that allows
Speaker 3: for cells to grow in an uncontrolled manner. So all
Speaker 3: cells follow a very specific cell cycle as they grow
Speaker 3: and divide, and they spend most of their time in
Speaker 3: a phase called interphase where they grow and also replicate
Speaker 3: their DNA, and then they undergo mitosis, which is the
Speaker 3: actual division of chromosomes, and then cytokinesis, which is when
Speaker 3: the cell divides into two separate cells and along the way.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of different checkpoints usually during that interphase
Speaker 3: that ensure that cells grow at an appropriate rate so
Speaker 3: not too quickly. We have to make sure there's enough
Speaker 3: nutrients to sustain growth and division, and to make sure
Speaker 3: that the cells aren't replicating any mistakes or problems in
Speaker 3: the DNA. So the proteins that we talked about in
Speaker 3: the HPV episode affect these parts of the cell cycle. Primarily,
Speaker 3: they encourage excessive growth and division. That allows for division
Speaker 3: of cells even if there are problems or mistakes in
Speaker 3: the DNA, or even if there's maybe not enough nutrients,
Speaker 3: they'll just keep growing and growing. So that's part of
Speaker 3: the equation. But that isn't quite enough to cause cells
Speaker 3: to grow indefinitely. Yeah, that's part of what accounts for
Speaker 3: cells that can grow more rapidly and persist longer. But
Speaker 3: there's another piece that we have to understand, and that
Speaker 3: is telomere's.
Speaker 2: Oh I love them, I know, right.
Speaker 3: So a telomere is the end part of our chromosomes.
Speaker 3: It's like a cap on the end of our chromosomes.
Speaker 3: Very very tips. In general, during normal DNA replication, it
Speaker 3: can be very difficult for our cells to fully replicate
Speaker 3: the entirety of the chromosome. So often the very very
Speaker 3: ends of the chromosomes, where the telomeres are actually becomes
Speaker 3: shorter with each cell division. This is normal, This happens
Speaker 3: as a normal part of cell division. So the telomeres
Speaker 3: are there as like an insurance policy, like Okay, well
Speaker 3: we miss the very end, but we didn't really need it.
Speaker 3: No big deal. But as cells divide and divide, those
Speaker 3: ends get shorter and shorter with each division, and eventually,
Speaker 3: once the telomeres are sufficiently shortened, it actually triggers an
Speaker 3: arrest of growth and a rest of the cell cycle
Speaker 3: and no more cell division. So you can kind of
Speaker 3: think of it like every cell having a limited number
Speaker 3: of times it can divide before those telomeres get too short,
Speaker 3: like you've heard like your heart only has a certain
Speaker 3: number of beats or whatever. Yeah, I don't think that's
Speaker 3: really true, but it's kind of like that idea, all right,
Speaker 3: But in some cells, like cancer cells, they've lost the
Speaker 3: ability to sense when telomeres get too short, and they
Speaker 3: keep on dividing and dividing and dividing, so they get
Speaker 3: shorter and shorter with each division. Now eventually those cells
Speaker 3: too will die or at least stop replicating because of damage.
Speaker 3: Once you get too damage in your DNA, then you
Speaker 3: just have damaged DNA and that cell can't continue to divide.
Speaker 3: So there has to be something else going on here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: how can this cell line keep dividing indefinitely and truly indefinitely?
Speaker 2: Does it add on length erin?
Speaker 5: It?
Speaker 3: Sure does. Interest turns out there's an entire enzyme group
Speaker 3: of enzymes called tilomera. I don't know if that's the
Speaker 3: proper way to pronounce it, but I think it's close.
Speaker 3: Tilomerase is an enzyme that specifically replicates just those telomere
Speaker 3: sequences to make sure that they are not lost or
Speaker 3: shortened during replication, which allows cells to escape this normal
Speaker 3: What is a normal mechanism that says cells should only
Speaker 3: divide a certain number of times and then stop dividing.
Speaker 3: If you turn telomerase on and you have that enzyme present,
Speaker 3: then these cells will be able to divide forever. And
Speaker 3: as it turns out, over ninety percent of cancer cells,
Speaker 3: most cancer cells have additional mutations beyond just in those
Speaker 3: tumor suppressor genes that we talked about that turn on
Speaker 3: the expression of tilomerase.
Speaker 2: And so tilamera and telomeres also have something to do
Speaker 2: with aging, like the process of aging, because I know, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what a lot of like anti aging studies or whatever, yes,
Speaker 2: focus on.
Speaker 3: It's thought that they have a large amount to do
Speaker 3: with aging. That like cellular senescence is governed by telomeres
Speaker 3: and like the length of telomeres.
Speaker 2: Right, and so it would make sense that like more
Speaker 2: quote unquote insults to your body through stress or inflammation
Speaker 2: or whatever would lead to more like cells turning over
Speaker 2: more quick rap which leads to faster aging exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at a cellular level, like aging at a cellular level.
Speaker 2: But there's also the downside that it is cancer.
Speaker 3: It is cancer. Interesting, yes, And so that's because Okay,
Speaker 3: I feel like what you're getting at is some really
Speaker 3: interesting things, right, Because the thing about HeLa and many
Speaker 3: of our cell lines is that they have mutations in
Speaker 3: not just tilomerase, right, they have mutations in these other
Speaker 3: properties like P fifty three, like p retinoblastoma, these other
Speaker 3: genes that also control like how rapid the cell grows
Speaker 3: and if it can grow, but still miss other important
Speaker 3: cell cycle checkpoints like that DNA is intact et cetera.
Speaker 3: Tilomerase is separate from all of that m HM. So
Speaker 3: if you could induce just tulomerase, you could, in theory
Speaker 3: get a cell to divide indefinitely that doesn't have the
Speaker 3: other properties of cancers.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, there would still be all of the checks
Speaker 2: in place, except for the fact that the telomeres would
Speaker 2: just not.
Speaker 3: Not shorten exactly right. And so that is actually a
Speaker 3: way that people have started to generate cell lines today.
Speaker 2: Interesting, right, it's are these cell lines prietary?
Speaker 3: Oh? Probably? Yeah, yeah, I mean every cell line that's
Speaker 3: developed it yeawadays yeah, yeah, but yeah, So today we
Speaker 3: have a lot of different cell lines. HeLa was the first,
Speaker 3: but now we have so so so many. We have
Speaker 3: cell lines from mice, from dogs, from humans, from so
Speaker 3: many different animals. We have them from kidney cells, from ovaries,
Speaker 3: from embryos, We have cell lines from so many different
Speaker 3: things that we can use for very specific purposes. And
Speaker 3: because we've learned so much about the cell cycle and
Speaker 3: about these specific controls on what can make a cell immortal,
Speaker 3: we can then create new cell lines. We can use
Speaker 3: viral vectors or engineer virul like HPV to integrate into
Speaker 3: genomes and cause these changes that can then turn a
Speaker 3: normal cell into an immortal cell. Or like I mentioned already,
Speaker 3: we can just induce the production of tulomerace so that
Speaker 3: we can then hopefully keep all of the other normal
Speaker 3: cellular architecture rather than more cancerous architecture that HPV infection
Speaker 3: would cause.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I know, Oh this is kind of tangentially related.
Speaker 3: Okay, but we got a couple.
Speaker 2: Of emails from people reminding us that cervical cancer is
Speaker 2: not one, absolutely, one hundred percent associated with HPV. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's very, very very like the vast vast majority, like
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent, but there are some cases that are
Speaker 2: not caused by HPV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should have said that in our intro as
Speaker 3: a correction. But yes, it's like ninety nine point seven
Speaker 3: or ninety nine point nine percent of all cervical cancers
Speaker 3: are known to be associated and caused by HPV. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So thank you to the people who reached out.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: Anyways, so back to cell lines. The last thing that
Speaker 3: I want to point out that I think is important
Speaker 3: not only to kind of understand cell culture and cell lines,
Speaker 3: but also because when we kind of talk about the
Speaker 3: current status of cell culture. I want to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit more about it is the difference between an
Speaker 3: immortal cell line and a stem cell HM. So I
Speaker 3: think a lot of times when people hear, especially if
Speaker 3: you don't have a lot of training in biology and
Speaker 3: like don't work with cell cultures all the time, when
Speaker 3: you hear cell culture, a lot of times what people
Speaker 3: think of are stem cells. And I think that's because
Speaker 3: they get a lot of headlines right because they can
Speaker 3: be controversial. So immortal cell lines like HeLa and stem
Speaker 3: cells are not the same. Both are used in scientific research,
Speaker 3: and both are incredibly important, but there's some pretty important differences.
Speaker 3: Immortalized cell lines like HeLa come from what are called
Speaker 3: primary tissues to begin with, which which means they come
Speaker 3: from differentiated like you can think of them as grown
Speaker 3: up cells like kidney cells or macrophages, which are white
Speaker 3: blood cells, or cervical epithelial cancer cells in the case
Speaker 3: of HeLa. So these cells are differentiated, They have a
Speaker 3: particular function in our bodies, They have a specific kind
Speaker 3: of architecture, and so cells from a kidney are going
Speaker 3: to be different than cells from a cervix. And whenever
Speaker 3: these cells divide, even when they do so indefinitely, they
Speaker 3: stay roughly the same. Stem cells, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: are undifferentiated, so these cells have the potential to become
Speaker 3: any or many different cell types, from like a neuron
Speaker 3: to a kidney, to a liver cell, to a muscle
Speaker 3: cell to whatever. Right, So sometimes people describe stem cells
Speaker 3: as like a little kid that has the potential to
Speaker 3: be anything they want to be when they grow up,
Speaker 3: and differentiated cells as a grown up who has one
Speaker 3: job or function. Oh wow, right, I don't be said.
Speaker 3: I don't like that analogy at all, because yeah, it
Speaker 3: can change careers. But anyways, I really tried to come
Speaker 3: up with a better one, and I couldn't, so that's
Speaker 3: that's what I got. But anyways, so that's kind of
Speaker 3: the biggest difference between stem cells and differentiated kind of
Speaker 3: adult cells. There are two different kinds of stem cells
Speaker 3: as well. In humans. There's embryonic stem cells, which are
Speaker 3: like where we began, so a zygote, because embryonic stem
Speaker 3: cells that's how we all formed in utero, and these
Speaker 3: cells can become literally any cell type. They become every
Speaker 3: single cell in our body. But even as grown humans,
Speaker 3: we have stem cells in our bodies as well. They're
Speaker 3: called somatic stem cells, meaning they are in our body
Speaker 3: currently rather than in an embryo. And these are very
Speaker 3: important because they serve to regenerate cells in our body
Speaker 3: that need regeneration. So like in our skin, for example,
Speaker 3: in the basal layer, the very bottom layer, there are
Speaker 3: stem cells that are epidermal stem cells that not only
Speaker 3: continually divide and produce more epidermal stem cells, but they
Speaker 3: can also differentiate into grown up skin cells. Right. And
Speaker 3: then we also have like in our bone marrow, hematopoetic
Speaker 3: stem cells, which can become all of our blood cells,
Speaker 3: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets. Right. So the
Speaker 3: big difference between embryonic stem cells and most somatic stem
Speaker 3: cells is that these somatic stem cells can only become
Speaker 3: like one or a few different kinds of cells, whereas
Speaker 3: embryonic can become.
Speaker 2: Like literally really anything, right, right.
Speaker 3: So that's just like to keep in mind they're different.
Speaker 3: Most cell lines that we use don't come from embryos
Speaker 3: or embryonic stem cells. They come from differentiated animal or
Speaker 3: human cells. So they come from a piece of tissue
Speaker 3: and then they are made into a cell line.
Speaker 1: M H.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Aaron do you have any other questions for me about
Speaker 3: cell culture?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm trying to think so the whole thing about
Speaker 2: there's a limited number of times that a particular cell
Speaker 2: line can or a particular cell can replicate before the
Speaker 2: machinery just shuts down. That's that's the Hayflick limit. Right, Yeah?
Speaker 3: Does that?
Speaker 2: How much does that vary across different cell types?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question. I don't fully know, but
Speaker 3: based on how different cell types function in adult humans,
Speaker 3: I would guess that there's quite a bit of variability,
Speaker 3: and maybe not necessarily in what that limit could theoretically be,
Speaker 3: but at least in what that limit is in a
Speaker 3: normal like human body for example, right, like practice exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 3: So Aaron, Yes, let's talk about where these cells came from.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's take a quick break first. So, Aaron,
Speaker 2: you have taken us through HeLa cells, what they are,
Speaker 2: some of what they can be used to do, and
Speaker 2: lots of other aspects of tissue culture. But as we know,
Speaker 2: that's just one part of the story of HeLa, right,
Speaker 2: and I feel super lucky that I get to tell
Speaker 2: the rest of that story, or at least like a
Speaker 2: good chunk of it, which is the story of the
Speaker 2: woman behind Thosesells, Henrietta Lacks, and the legacy she has
Speaker 2: left behind, both in terms of scientific achievements, but also
Speaker 2: in raising these important questions of ownership, informed consent, what
Speaker 2: it means to be immortal. Right off the bat, I
Speaker 2: want to say that this is such a big story
Speaker 2: that I can't focus on all of it. But fortunately
Speaker 2: there are other great resources out there, including the book
Speaker 2: where I got most of this information, The Immortal Life
Speaker 2: of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca Sclute, And there's also a
Speaker 2: movie based on the book on HBO. And will of
Speaker 2: course post these resources on our website so you can
Speaker 2: read more. Okay, So, who was Henriette A.
Speaker 3: Lax? Right?
Speaker 2: The answer you would probably come across in most biology textbooks,
Speaker 2: especially ones that were published like let's say fifteen years
Speaker 2: ago or so, is that, in short, Henrietta was a
Speaker 2: black woman who died of cervical cancer in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: one at the age of thirty one, and from whom
Speaker 2: cells were taken. A lot of books might actually say donated.
Speaker 2: That gave rise to the most ubiquitous immortal cell culture
Speaker 2: line that has been used in every type of scientific
Speaker 2: research you could think of, literally literally, and that alone
Speaker 2: is an incredibly impressive one sentence, maybe like a run
Speaker 2: on sentence a biography, But what it doesn't tell you
Speaker 2: is that she was also a mother, She was a daughter,
Speaker 2: a wife, a friend, a sister, someone who is more
Speaker 2: than just those cells and the legacy that they have
Speaker 2: left and continue to leave behind. One of the themes
Speaker 2: that has come up more than once on this podcast,
Speaker 2: many times on this podcast is the problem with the
Speaker 2: lack of humanity in medicine or science. It's often more
Speaker 2: straightforward or efficient to look for what we can measure
Speaker 2: or observe directly to make a diagnosis or to detect
Speaker 2: patterns within a population. And of course the application of
Speaker 2: the statistical analysis and data collection and the development of
Speaker 2: diagnostic criteria, it's all been hugely beneficial. But you know
Speaker 2: how people say, you can't see the forest for the trees. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is kind of like the opposite losing sight of
Speaker 2: the trees for the forest. It's so important to remember,
Speaker 2: but way too easy to forget that behind each of
Speaker 2: those data points, behind each person diagnosed with a disease,
Speaker 2: behind each person who makes a discovery or a diagnosis
Speaker 2: is a human being with an entire history and life
Speaker 2: of their own. And I think keeping that humanity in
Speaker 2: science and seeing both the forest and the trees probably
Speaker 2: makes you a better scientist and a better physician and
Speaker 2: probably just a better human overall. And that's a big
Speaker 2: reason kind of why we include these first hand accounts
Speaker 2: in our episodes, to ground these topics in real life,
Speaker 2: to remind ourselves and hopefully listeners that, like, these diseases
Speaker 2: don't happen just like in a textbook, like they happen
Speaker 2: to real people. People experience them. And that's also why
Speaker 2: for this episode, rather than including a first hand account,
Speaker 2: we wanted to focus just this almost this whole history
Speaker 2: section on this person, on the first hand account on
Speaker 2: the person behind these HeLa cells.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's we weren't lying when we said this is
Speaker 3: a very different episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So who was HeLa? We keep saying HeLa, HeLa
Speaker 2: H E like capital H, lowercase E, capital L lowercase A.
Speaker 2: HeLa stands for Henrietta Lax, the first two letters of
Speaker 2: her first and last name. Henrietta Lax was born Loretta
Speaker 2: Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on August first, nineteen twenty. Henriette
Speaker 2: was only four when her mother, Eliza died, and to
Speaker 2: help take care of Henrietta and her nine siblings, her
Speaker 2: father Johnny brought the family to Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta
Speaker 2: lived with her grandfather, Tommy Lax. Johnny's family had lived
Speaker 2: in Clover for decades. His ancestors had farmed the land
Speaker 2: while enslaved, and they continued to farm tobacco after slavery ended.
Speaker 2: Henrietta spent her childhood working on the farm, milking cows,
Speaker 2: feeding chickens, taking care of the pigs and horses, planting
Speaker 2: and collecting tobacco leaves. Getting to school wasn't as simple
Speaker 2: as hopping on a bus. It was a long two
Speaker 2: mile walk each way, and Henrietta made that walk every
Speaker 2: day through sixth grade. In her free time, she and
Speaker 2: her cousins would swim in the swimming hole, or play
Speaker 2: tag or hopscotch. Or they would take their earnings and
Speaker 2: go to the movie theater, where they would watch black
Speaker 2: and white movies, sitting the only place they were allowed,
Speaker 2: which was in the colored section. Henrietta's friends described her
Speaker 2: as lively and tough, someone who always stood her ground,
Speaker 2: but also someone who was warm and sweet and generous,
Speaker 2: the person who made you see life in technicolor when
Speaker 2: you were around her. When she was twenty, Henrietta married
Speaker 2: David or Day Lax. Over the course of their relationship,
Speaker 2: they would have five children, Lawrence, Elsie, David or Sonny, Deborah,
Speaker 2: and Zakaria born Joseph. Not long after getting married, Henrietta
Speaker 2: and Day moved up to Baltimore, where there was a
Speaker 2: huge boom in industrial jobs now that the US had
Speaker 2: entered into World War Two. Henrietta didn't love living in
Speaker 2: Baltimore in the city, so she would take the kids
Speaker 2: back to Clover as often as she could, which was
Speaker 2: most every weekend, and among her friends and family, Henrietta
Speaker 2: was known for being an amazing cook, spending hours every
Speaker 2: day putting together rice pudding or slow cooked greens, or
Speaker 2: spaghetti and meatballs, cooking tons and tons of foods so
Speaker 2: she could feed her kids and her husband, as well
Speaker 2: as whatever cousins happened to stop by. In the evenings,
Speaker 2: she and Day would play cards and listen to music
Speaker 2: if he was off work, and if he wasn't, she
Speaker 2: would often go out dancing with her friend Sadie. But
Speaker 2: life for Henrietta wasn't always this house full of delicious
Speaker 2: food or nights out dancing. There were also some incredibly
Speaker 2: tough times, like when she took her daughter Elsie to
Speaker 2: Crownsville State Hospital, which used to be known as the
Speaker 2: Hospital for the negro Insane. Elsie, who was deaf and
Speaker 2: seemed to suffer from epilepsy, would die in that hospital
Speaker 2: when she was fifteen, which was after Henrietta died, but
Speaker 2: Henrietta's family talked about how dropping Elsie off there was
Speaker 2: one of the most difficult times for Henrietta, something that
Speaker 2: she never quite recovered from, and so for ten years
Speaker 2: Henrietta and her family lived in Baltimore through these ups
Speaker 2: and downs, and then one cold and rainy January day
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty one day drove Henrietta to Johns Hopkins Hospital,
Speaker 2: where she had an appointment to check out what she
Speaker 2: called a knot on her womb. Just a few months
Speaker 2: before this appointment, she had been at the same hospital
Speaker 2: where she had given birth to Zacharia, but there was
Speaker 2: no note left behind about this knot or lump, or
Speaker 2: any sort of cervical lesion or regular larity. But she
Speaker 2: knew that there was something there, something that was causing
Speaker 2: her a lot of pain and irregular bleeding. She saw
Speaker 2: a local doctor first, who said it was a syphilis sore,
Speaker 2: but the test came back negative, and so he recommended
Speaker 2: that she had all the way to Johns Hopkins, which
Speaker 2: is a twenty mile drive, And there wasn't anything particularly
Speaker 2: special about Johns Hopkins itself. It was just that the
Speaker 2: other major hospitals that were closer wouldn't treat black people,
Speaker 2: even Johns Hopkins was segregated. At Hopkins, she was seen
Speaker 2: by gynecologist Howard Jones, who took note of the pain
Speaker 2: that she described, the bleeding in between periods, and the
Speaker 2: fact that she felt a lump on the neck of
Speaker 2: her womb. And when he examined her, he found the
Speaker 2: lump that she mentioned, which he described as a cervical tumor,
Speaker 2: one unlike any he had ever seen before and he
Speaker 2: would never see the likes of again. It was a
Speaker 2: hard mass about the side a nickel, but unlike other
Speaker 2: cervical lesions, this was shiny and purple. He compared it
Speaker 2: to grape jello. And it bled so easily, like just
Speaker 2: with the smallest sort of like poking. Yeah, he cut
Speaker 2: off a little bit for a biopsy and told Henrietta
Speaker 2: to go home and wait for an answer, and she
Speaker 2: didn't have to wait long. A few days later, on
Speaker 2: February fifth, nineteen fifty one, Henrietta received the news that
Speaker 2: the tumor on her cervix was malignant and that she
Speaker 2: would have to return to the hospital for treatment, which
Speaker 2: at the time consisted of radium tubes being stitched into
Speaker 2: the tumor and nearby tissue, which sounds incredibly painful. So
Speaker 2: the next day she was back in the hospital undergoing
Speaker 2: this painful procedure. Fortunately, while unconscious under anesthesia and during
Speaker 2: this procedure, the surgeon, Lawrence Wharton Junior, sliced two dime
Speaker 2: sized pieces of tissue from rietta cervix, one from the
Speaker 2: region where there was a tumor and the other from
Speaker 2: the unaffected region. Dime size seems big.
Speaker 3: But it does seem big, yeah.
Speaker 2: He then packaged these up to be sent to a
Speaker 2: tissue culture lab run by a guy named George Guy,
Speaker 2: where they were then processed by a lab employee named
Speaker 2: Mary kubachk. Mary cut up the tissue into tiny, tiny
Speaker 2: bits and placed them into culture tubes with nutritional broth,
Speaker 2: making sure to keep the tumor tissue separate from the
Speaker 2: normal tissue. She labeled the tub's hila the first two letters,
Speaker 2: like I said, of Henrietta Lack's first and last name,
Speaker 2: and that was the standard naming procedure in the lab.
Speaker 2: Mary didn't expect much to happen, honestly, because the lab
Speaker 2: had worked on cell culture for years and the highly
Speaker 2: sought after immortal human cell line was beginning to feel
Speaker 2: like a pipe dream.
Speaker 3: It's so, can I ask a question? Yeah? So was
Speaker 3: this a lab that like they were just taking samples
Speaker 3: from everyone, just trying to grow cells unsuccessfully?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, yeah, I mean, and tissue culture had kind
Speaker 5: of like fallen out of fashion for a while, and
Speaker 5: so this like this lab was kind.
Speaker 2: Of one of the main ones still working on it,
Speaker 2: still trying, Yeah, because it seemed hopeless to find, you know,
Speaker 2: this like immortal cell line where you could actually do
Speaker 2: sustained research on a particular cell.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And was it kind of standard practice that surgeons
Speaker 3: would take samples of everyone that they were operating. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So that's that's what's sort of the interesting thing, and
Speaker 2: it's also what surprised me, and I to be honest
Speaker 2: of that. In the Immortal Life book, which was published
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, I believe, I'm not sure whether anything
Speaker 2: has changed, but at least according to that book, like
Speaker 2: a lot of the you know, ownership of tissue and
Speaker 2: in the operating room, like once that tissue is removed
Speaker 2: from your body, whether it's your appendix, whether it's whatever,
Speaker 2: that no longer belongs to you, and you as an
Speaker 2: individual can't. Like there's been a lot of legal battles
Speaker 2: over the ownership of cell lines, and what seems to
Speaker 2: be the case is that an individual cannot own their
Speaker 2: own cell lines, which I think is very interesting unless
Speaker 2: you were, like were scientists, and you've developed it yourself.
Speaker 3: You develop your own cell line, then you can, but
Speaker 3: if someone takes it from you.
Speaker 2: Right anyway?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sorry, so yeah and so yeah, George and his wife
Speaker 2: Margaret had worked for years and years for an immortal
Speaker 2: cell line. Wait they were married, yes? Oh so so
Speaker 2: Margaret different than Mary? Oh yeah, but Margaret also worked
Speaker 2: in the lab. Yeah, okay, okay, And apparently an immortal
Speaker 2: cell line had been found before using my cells. But
Speaker 2: the guys didn't want my cells. They wanted to achieve
Speaker 2: this with human cells, and so they tried and failed,
Speaker 2: and they tried and failed for thirty years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So you asked, where did they get all of this
Speaker 2: to shoot to try on?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean quote unquote donation, right, Like, so they
Speaker 2: would partner with different physicians or surgeons who would take
Speaker 2: it from a patient, and way more often than not.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like the standard rule was to
Speaker 2: do this without the patient's knowledge, without their consent, and
Speaker 2: that was the common practice at the time. I think
Speaker 2: that there are some different consent rules today in terms
Speaker 2: of like, but I don't think it's I don't think
Speaker 2: you are legally requite you got it.
Speaker 3: I'll talk a little bit more about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, good, Okay, it's surprisingly correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: Not that different.
Speaker 3: Today, it's not Aaron.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, one of the doctors that George guy
Speaker 2: had partnered with was this guy named Richard Ti Lind
Speaker 2: who was a gynecologist trying to get to the bottom
Speaker 2: of whether or not in C two cervical cancer posed
Speaker 2: a threat and could become invasive or whether it would
Speaker 2: just remain in place. So we talked a little bit
Speaker 2: about this discussion in our HPV episode. Right yeah, and
Speaker 2: Ti Lind was firmly in the inc two cancers are
Speaker 2: pre cancers and super dangerous camp. So he was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: if only I can compare the cell types of these
Speaker 2: two cancers alongside normal cervical cells, I can show that
Speaker 2: I've been right all along and that all of these
Speaker 2: hysterectomies I've performed were not unwarranted. So he was like
Speaker 2: a big you know, Oh there's cancer. We're going to
Speaker 2: do a history and to cut the whole thing out. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so he formed a deal with George Guy where
Speaker 2: he would provide Guy with cervical cancer tissue from his patients,
Speaker 2: and Guy would try to culture the cells.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's all coming together.
Speaker 2: Here we go. Any person who walked into Johns Hopkins
Speaker 2: and was diagnosed with cervical cancer would have a tiny
Speaker 2: bit of their tissue sent off to George Guy's lab
Speaker 2: without their knowledge, needless to sa ignore their consent. Okay,
Speaker 2: one of these people was Henrietta Lax. So back to
Speaker 2: Henrietta cells in a lab. Usually, what happened next, and
Speaker 2: what Mary certainly expected to happen, was that the cells
Speaker 2: in these tubes would maybe hang on for a few
Speaker 2: days at most, but would eventually die. Yeah, and this
Speaker 2: is exactly what did happen to the bits of tissue
Speaker 2: taken from the unaffected region of Henrietta cervix. But it
Speaker 2: didn't happen, not even close to the bits of cancerous tissue.
Speaker 2: The cells in those tubes didn't just hang in there.
Speaker 2: They grew and they grew and they grew. Mary had
Speaker 2: never seen anything like it before, and she hurried off
Speaker 2: to tell George. After hearing the news from Mary, it
Speaker 2: occurred to him that this could be what they've been
Speaker 2: looking for all of those decades, finally an immortal cell line,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't shy about his discovery. He made an
Speaker 2: announcement on television, holding up a tube of cells that
Speaker 2: he promised would help conquer cancer. He told his colleagues,
Speaker 2: who asked him to send them some of the cells,
Speaker 2: that they could play around with them, and then when
Speaker 2: they received the cells, they in turn grew more and
Speaker 2: sent those around the world. But as the news of
Speaker 2: this immortal human cell line called Hilo was spreading among
Speaker 2: the medical community, not just at Johns Hopkins, but seriously
Speaker 2: around the world, there was one person who knew nothing
Speaker 2: about it, the person whose name was on those cells,
Speaker 2: the person from whom they had been taken, Henrietta Lacks.
Speaker 2: By the time Guy had made his television appearance, Henrietta
Speaker 2: had returned home from the hospital, and although initially she
Speaker 2: seemed to be getting better from the radium treatments, the
Speaker 2: improvements didn't last. Over the next several months, Henrietta grew
Speaker 2: weaker and felt aches and pains in her abdomen. She
Speaker 2: hid it well, though, with just her husband and a
Speaker 2: few of her friends and cousins in the know, but
Speaker 2: then she took a turn for the worse. Follow Up
Speaker 2: doctor's visits had found a mass attached to repelvic wall
Speaker 2: and tumors on her uterus, kidneys, and urethra. Her pain
Speaker 2: was unbearable to the point where she just couldn't hide
Speaker 2: it anymore, and her doctors wrote that treatment was not
Speaker 2: really possible. The tumors were inoperable and pain relief was
Speaker 2: the only option, which was for the most part, seemed
Speaker 2: to be ineffective. During one of these doctor's visits, actually
Speaker 2: to Lynd tried to take more of the tissue from
Speaker 2: Henrietta cervix again without her consent or knowledge, but it
Speaker 2: was too full of toxins due to her advanced disease,
Speaker 2: and the cells died in culture. Henrietta spent the last
Speaker 2: month of her life in the hospital at Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 2: dealing with unbearable pain, high fevers, nausea, and new tumors
Speaker 2: that seemed to appear daily. When Day brought the children
Speaker 2: to visit, she watched them through the window until she
Speaker 2: was unable to get out of bed anymore. And on
Speaker 2: October fourth, nineteen fifty one, Henrietta Lax died, and while
Speaker 2: her family and friends saw it as an occasion for mourning,
Speaker 2: George Guy saw it as an opportunity to collect more
Speaker 2: samples from this woman who produced the first immortal cell
Speaker 2: culture line what it was. Yeah, So he asked Day
Speaker 2: for permission for an autopsy without making it explicit that
Speaker 2: they wanted more samples from her, or that they got
Speaker 2: samples from her in the first place.
Speaker 3: The first place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think what's interesting about this is that
Speaker 2: while it was legal at this time to take tissue
Speaker 2: from a living person without their consent, it was not
Speaker 2: legal to perform an autopsy or take tissue from the
Speaker 2: deceased without consent.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's still true. Like the rules that govern
Speaker 3: what you can do with tissues from a dead body
Speaker 3: are very.
Speaker 2: Strict, right they are, but they're not as strict for
Speaker 2: those that are living, which is just fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at first day said no way, but they
Speaker 2: asked again when he came to the hospital, and he
Speaker 2: finally agreed to a partial autopsy. Mary Kubachak, who first
Speaker 2: cultured Henrietta cells, stood next to the pathologist as he
Speaker 2: cut samples from Henriette's bladder, bowel, uterus, kidney, vagina, ovary, appendix, liver, heart, lungs,
Speaker 2: and of course cervix, placing them into Petrie dishes for
Speaker 2: later research. Finally, the autopsy was complete and Henrietta was
Speaker 2: allowed to rest. She was buried in the cemetery behind
Speaker 2: the house where she grew up in Clover. But as
Speaker 2: we know, just because Henrietta stopped living doesn't mean she
Speaker 2: stopped impacting people's lives. There's this quote by someone named
Speaker 2: Irvin Yallom, where the basic gist of it is that
Speaker 2: everybody dies twice, the first being like your actual death,
Speaker 2: and the second when the last person who knows you dies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if that's the case, Henrietta's memory will be carried
Speaker 2: on for a very long time, in part due to
Speaker 2: the important conversations that have taken place because of her
Speaker 2: quote unquote donation and this question of consent, and in
Speaker 2: part because of the many people who have done so
Speaker 2: much to bring awareness to her life and experiences, and
Speaker 2: another part, again due to the incredible achievements made possible
Speaker 2: by HeLa cells. So let's talk a little bit about those.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's so.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, even before Henrietta died, her cells were
Speaker 2: being sent all over the world to laboratories, not just
Speaker 2: in biomedical science, but chemistry, physics, engineering, I mean, you
Speaker 2: name it, like you said, any kind of research you
Speaker 2: could imagine, for sure HeLa cells.
Speaker 3: Have been involved. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: And even though the cells were pretty easy to maintain
Speaker 2: in the lab, demand still outpaced supply, like by a lot.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty two, the United States experienced the worst
Speaker 2: polio outbreak in the nation's history, with thousands killed and
Speaker 2: tens of thousands left paralyzed, and everyone demanding a vaccine
Speaker 2: for the disease. And even though there were many people
Speaker 2: researching a polio vaccine, as we know from our polio
Speaker 2: episode Back all the Way in Season one, A Long
Speaker 2: time Ago, Long time Ago. Progress was slow because the
Speaker 2: viral rus was difficult to grow in cell culture and
Speaker 2: often had to be grown in live monkeys. That is
Speaker 2: until HeLa cells came along wow which were found to
Speaker 2: be able to be infected with poliovirus. A massive cell
Speaker 2: production laboratory was set up at Tuskegee University, the first
Speaker 2: of its kind. At first, the cells that were produced
Speaker 2: here were pretty much only for polio research, but eventually,
Speaker 2: when it became apparent that there was not going to
Speaker 2: be a shortage of HeLa cells, the Tuskegee Center began
Speaker 2: sending the cells not just to polio labs, but to
Speaker 2: anyone who wanted to use the cells to study basically anything.
Speaker 2: Ten dollars a sample plus air express fees. These cells
Speaker 2: were soon used to study all kinds of viruses, to
Speaker 2: develop and standardized tissue culture techniques, to work on best
Speaker 2: practices for freezing and storing cells, and so much more. Aaron,
Speaker 2: you went into a bunch of the things. And it's funny.
Speaker 2: When I was planning on this episode, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go through all the things that they accomplished, like,
Speaker 2: there's no way to even begin to list them.
Speaker 3: It's yeah.
Speaker 2: And this early work though, using helo cells helped to
Speaker 2: build the foundation of a field that would later go
Speaker 2: on to allow for stem cell isolation, cloning of whole
Speaker 2: animals in vitro fertilization. The study of helo cells also
Speaker 2: led to the discovery that there weren't forty eight, but
Speaker 2: rather forty six human chromosomes, and then this then led
Speaker 2: to the growth of the field of diagnosis of genetic
Speaker 2: diseases involving chromosome abnormalities such as Down syndrome or Kleinfelter
Speaker 2: syndrome or Turner syndrome. Wow. Yeah. Helo cells were blasted
Speaker 2: with radiation during the Cold War to look at the
Speaker 2: effects of radiation on a cellular level, or they were
Speaker 2: used to observe the effects of steroids, hormones, vitamins, cancer, stressors, bacteria. Basically,
Speaker 2: if you can think of a biomedical or really any
Speaker 2: kind of research topic, helo cells were there as part
Speaker 2: of it. It was clear that the application of HeLa
Speaker 2: cells in biomedical research was basically endless, and soon the
Speaker 2: demand for the cells once again outpaced the production capacity
Speaker 2: of Tuskegee. So a new company was started, Microbiological Associates,
Speaker 2: which shipped out Henrietta's cells to whoever could pay. And
Speaker 2: even though you probably would have guessed this already, all
Speaker 2: note that no one in the Lax family had been
Speaker 2: told about this endeavor, much less given any compensation for
Speaker 2: the industry that had grown out of the cells taken
Speaker 2: from Henrietta without her consent. At this point, the excitement
Speaker 2: around Henrietta's cells had grown beyond just what people were
Speaker 2: using them to do research on the public had started
Speaker 2: to learn about them as well. News articles began appearing
Speaker 2: about the cells, but these articles didn't focus just on
Speaker 2: the scientific achievements made possible by HeLa cells. They also
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about the woman herself. But this presented
Speaker 2: an issue for the doctors who took and used her
Speaker 2: cells without her permission, using her real name, and the
Speaker 2: article would not only link the Lax family to those cells,
Speaker 2: meaning whatever genetic or cellular information that arose from this
Speaker 2: research could be tied to them. But another reason, and
Speaker 2: maybe the real reason that Tilland and Guy cared was
Speaker 2: because it meant that the Lax family would also then
Speaker 2: learn that Henrietta cells were taken without her permission to
Speaker 2: create a profitable industry. The laws at the time weren't
Speaker 2: as protective of a patient's rights as they were today,
Speaker 2: even though it's only marginally more in terms of informed
Speaker 2: consent and patient confidentiality, but it was still clear at
Speaker 2: that point that that's where the laws were headed, and
Speaker 2: as a compromise, the editors of some of these articles
Speaker 2: agreed to change her name Henrietta's name to Helen Ell
Speaker 2: and it was also said in this article that the
Speaker 2: tissue was taken from her after her death, and so
Speaker 2: from this article on this was like one of the
Speaker 2: first articles about Henrietta and the fact that they were
Speaker 2: her cells. Henrietta Lax would be changed to Helen Lane
Speaker 2: or Helen Larsen, leaving her family in the dark about
Speaker 2: the existence of her cells. But even if the Lax
Speaker 2: family didn't know about the cells and their connection to them,
Speaker 2: many researchers did, and they would soon be knocking at
Speaker 2: the door. By nineteen sixty six, HeLa cells had been
Speaker 2: in use in all kinds of research for fifteen years,
Speaker 2: and cell culture technology had also greatly advanced, with the
Speaker 2: isolation of many other different cell lines. But then came
Speaker 2: what I think in the book was referred to as
Speaker 2: the HeLa bomb. In nineteen sixty six, it was suggested
Speaker 2: that many of the different human cell lines that scientists
Speaker 2: believe they had isolated and conducted research on were actually
Speaker 2: HeLa contaminated, meaning that HeLa had taken over them, meaning
Speaker 2: that they weren't what they had what they thought they were. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so this, like I guess, vigorous quality of HeLa
Speaker 2: cells had long been known, but this massive takeover was
Speaker 2: on a whole other level because if this were true,
Speaker 2: that meant millions of dollars of research money and years
Speaker 2: of research were essentially wasted because they were done on
Speaker 2: cells with properties that may not have been there.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, like you thought that you were working with
Speaker 3: kidney and you were working with HeLa exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But okay, first things. First, researchers were like, well,
Speaker 2: we need to get like a handle on the extent
Speaker 2: of this of the contamination that exists. And also we
Speaker 2: you know, and once we get that done, we want
Speaker 2: to find a way to better control contamination in the future.
Speaker 2: And so that you know, both of those things could
Speaker 2: be achieved by developing a test specifically for the presence
Speaker 2: of HeLa cells. To keep that in mind, we need
Speaker 2: to test specifically for HeLa cells.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, not going to be good and no.
Speaker 2: By the nineteen seventies, the misleading names of Helen Lane
Speaker 2: or Helen Larsen began to fall out of use as
Speaker 2: journalists and scientists began to set the record straight, with
Speaker 2: one person in a letter to Nature suggesting that it
Speaker 2: might be time to authenticate her name quote and let
Speaker 2: he Lah enjoy the fame she so richly deserves. So
Speaker 2: even though Henriette's real name and connection to the cells
Speaker 2: began to be widely known among the researchers who cultured
Speaker 2: her cells, the family still had no idea of their
Speaker 2: existence until nineteen seventy three when Bobbett, Lawrence's wife, met
Speaker 2: the brother in law of a friend of hers. And
Speaker 2: this brother in law of her friend worked at the
Speaker 2: NIH and when Babette mentioned that her last name was Lax,
Speaker 2: he was like, Oh, that's strange. I work with cells
Speaker 2: from someone named Henrietta Lax. And Bobbett was like, well,
Speaker 2: that was my mother in law's name, but she died
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago and he was like, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: that's whose cells I work with?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: And obviously this led to a lot of confusion for Bobbett,
Speaker 2: the news that this guy worked with her deceased mother
Speaker 2: in law cells and the fact that he ordered them
Speaker 2: quote just like everyone else, like right, how, which implied
Speaker 2: that there were people all over the country and even
Speaker 2: all over the world who had access to her deceased
Speaker 2: mother in law cells.
Speaker 3: That's I can't even imagine how bizarre, right?
Speaker 2: It felt like a violation or an invasion maybe, like
Speaker 2: just I mean, this was yeah, like in many ways,
Speaker 2: this seemed like like some sort of a nightmare, Like
Speaker 2: first they took Henrietta cells without asking, and it seemed likely,
Speaker 2: or at least possible, that next they would try to
Speaker 2: conduct non consensual research on her relatives, which was not
Speaker 2: an unfounded fear, because while discussing this problem of HeLa contamination,
Speaker 2: one of the scientists suggested that a lot of the
Speaker 2: headache could be resolved if they had genetic markers to
Speaker 2: test for the presence of HeLa cells, and one way
Speaker 2: to do that would be to test Henrietta's children as
Speaker 2: well as day lax. No problem, one of the doctors said,
Speaker 2: there's still patients at Johns Hopkins, so we can call
Speaker 2: them right up. And that's what they did. Yeah, according
Speaker 2: to the postdoc put in charge of collecting the blood
Speaker 2: from the Lax family, she called up the family and
Speaker 2: eplained that they wanted to draw some blood from the
Speaker 2: family members so that they can develop these genetic markers.
Speaker 2: But according today, what they said was that they wanted
Speaker 2: to test for the same cancer that Henrietta had and
Speaker 2: her children. Oh dem And so they agreed and blood
Speaker 2: was drawn. Did anyone attempt to obtain informed consent?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Did anyone fill out an IRB? No?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: And while those requirements were not yet finalized in the law,
Speaker 2: they were only months or days away from being finalized.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And when Deborah asked Victor mccusick, who spearheaded this effort,
Speaker 2: about her mother and about her cells, he ticked off
Speaker 2: some things that they had helped to accomplish, like the
Speaker 2: polio vaccine, this genetic research, atomic bomb testing, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And then he handed her a book that he had
Speaker 2: edited called Medical Genetics. In that book, she found jargon
Speaker 2: filled sentences and a photo of her mother that no
Speaker 2: one had ever remembered providing and certainly had not given
Speaker 2: permission to print what yeah, And this was as far
Speaker 2: as he went to explain how her cells were still
Speaker 2: alive even though Henrietta had died, and why they had
Speaker 2: taken her cells, and how they had accomplished those things.
Speaker 2: And they certainly didn't tell Deborah any cancer results because
Speaker 2: they weren't testing for cancer, of course, of course not.
Speaker 2: They left the Lax family with way more questions than
Speaker 2: they attempted to answer, and over the next few decades
Speaker 2: the answers would be slow to come. A reporter for
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone named Michael Rogers, who was one of the first,
Speaker 2: if not the first reporters to contact the Lax family
Speaker 2: about Henrietta, published an article that led to many other
Speaker 2: reporters and people knocking on their door, some well intentioned,
Speaker 2: others very much not, but overall well over time, this
Speaker 2: narrative was shifting from what have these cells been used
Speaker 2: to accomplish? To what does informed consent mean? What rights
Speaker 2: does a person have over their body? How can patient
Speaker 2: privacy be insured, especially in this age of genetic research?
Speaker 2: Can genes be patented? And finally, after all this time,
Speaker 2: who was the person from whom these cells were taken,
Speaker 2: and many people have worked to raise awareness about Henriette A.
Speaker 2: Lax and her story, especially her family and also Rebecca Sclute,
Speaker 2: who wrote the book The Immortal Life of Henriette A. Lax.
Speaker 2: And Henrietta's story is still invoked in discussions of how
Speaker 2: race intersects with informed consent and tissue research and patient privacy.
Speaker 2: Some institutions and companies that have profited off Henrietta cells
Speaker 2: are finally donating money as a small step towards acknowledging
Speaker 2: her contribution, and Henrietta's legacy extends far beyond the scientific
Speaker 2: and medical advancements that her cells helped to achieve. There
Speaker 2: is now the Henrietta Lax Foundation, which provides quote financial
Speaker 2: assistance to individuals and families, particularly within minority communities, who
Speaker 2: were involved in historic research cases without their knowledge, consent,
Speaker 2: or benefit. This includes the cases of Henrietta Lax and
Speaker 2: HeLa cells, the Tuskegee syphilis studies, and the human radiation experiments,
Speaker 2: among others. In addition, several institutions have awarded Henrietta honorary doctorates.
Speaker 2: There are plans for a JOHNS. Hopkins research building to
Speaker 2: be named after her. She's now in the National Women's
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame. Her name has been tied to laws
Speaker 2: protecting participants in clinical research trials. There are plays and
Speaker 2: songs about her. I mean, the list could go on forever,
Speaker 2: just like hersels So Aaron, even though I feel like
Speaker 2: I went on forever, there's so much I didn't cover,
Speaker 2: and I'm very excited to hear what you're going to
Speaker 2: tell me about what HeLa cells and what informed consent
Speaker 2: and tissue culture research is up to today.
Speaker 3: Oh, I can't wait to tell you. We'll take a
Speaker 3: quick break first. There have been over one hundred and
Speaker 3: ten thousand research articles published using HeLa cells.
Speaker 2: That's estimated incredible.
Speaker 3: Three Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work with HeLa cells,
Speaker 3: most recently in twenty fourteen for the development of advanced
Speaker 3: microscopy techniques that allow you to view cellular growth like
Speaker 3: live while telling and like we kind of mentioned many
Speaker 3: times already, HeLa cells have been used for literally everything
Speaker 3: that you can imagine, from the study of virology to
Speaker 3: cancer therapeutics, drug delivery systems, basic cellular functions, cell signaling, everything, everything.
Speaker 3: There's a visual that I'll link to that I think
Speaker 3: kind of gives you a little bit of a clue
Speaker 3: of just like the array of topics and just how
Speaker 3: many there are. But literally everything that we do in
Speaker 3: biology has been done on HeLa cells.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. We have come amazingly far in the last
Speaker 3: seventy years in terms of our understanding not only of
Speaker 3: cellular development and molecular biology, but also in our ability
Speaker 3: to use this knowledge for therapeutics, for vaccines, things that
Speaker 3: we talked about in so many previous episodes this season
Speaker 3: and in previous seasons, like in our Huntington's Disease episode
Speaker 3: when we talked about developments in gene therapy and the
Speaker 3: potential for something like Crisper to change the game when
Speaker 3: it comes to genetic diseases. This is only possible because
Speaker 3: of in vitro cell lines. We have made immense strides
Speaker 3: in developing specific targeted cancer treatments like monoclonal antibodies. We've
Speaker 3: also developed treatments for things like even covid and other
Speaker 3: infectious diseases.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: We are getting better and better at developing cell lines,
Speaker 3: both from human cells but also animal cell lines to
Speaker 3: produce very specific proteins and antibodies that are closer and
Speaker 3: closer to you, exactly like a very targeted type of
Speaker 3: structure that we want to produce. It's really difficult to
Speaker 3: over I don't think it's possible to overstate the impact
Speaker 3: that these cells have had. No.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's probably like one of the biggest
Speaker 2: things in biomedical research.
Speaker 3: History, right right, so many things. So another future foray
Speaker 3: that we've touched on in the past in our organ
Speaker 3: transplantation episode is the development of induced pluripotent stem cells. Okay,
Speaker 3: so let's talk about this a little bit. Pluripotent stem
Speaker 3: cells are like embryonic stem cells, they can become any
Speaker 3: type of cell. But induced pluripotent stem cells means that
Speaker 3: you take cells from like a grown human, like a
Speaker 3: full adult human or a kid, but a fully differentiated cell,
Speaker 3: and using things that are too complicated for me to
Speaker 3: fully understand and talk about, but including tilomerace, you can
Speaker 3: cause these cells to revert back to being stem cells.
Speaker 3: We have the technology to do this today, and this
Speaker 3: means that not only can you develop an immortal cell
Speaker 3: line from any person cells, but you can develop stem
Speaker 3: cells from any individual cells, which means that those cells
Speaker 3: could then be induced to differentiate into any other cell type.
Speaker 3: That type of technology, combined with technology to grow cells
Speaker 3: in three dimensional structures, it's the exact type of technology
Speaker 3: that makes it even imaginable to someday be able to
Speaker 3: grow entire human organs, which could change the game when
Speaker 3: it comes to treatment of chronic and currently uncurable diseases.
Speaker 3: And even though we don't have that technology right now,
Speaker 3: the fact that it's even something that we can dream
Speaker 3: about is only possible because of HeLa cells, because of
Speaker 3: Henrietta Lacks. Yeah, yeah, it's it's hard to even like
Speaker 3: put into words how influential this has been, Like it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but even though that's hard to put into words, just
Speaker 3: how influential in terms of scientific achievements HeLa cells have been.
Speaker 3: Like you mentioned a lot Aarin, we have to recognize
Speaker 3: what a massive kind of ethical issue has arisen because
Speaker 3: of this. Not only was it using cells without her permission,
Speaker 3: it was also identifying these cells as belonging to her,
Speaker 3: thereby releasing information about her and her family members without
Speaker 3: their knowledge or permission.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And the thing is, like you kind of alluded to Aarin,
Speaker 3: we really haven't completely fixed the system to ensure that
Speaker 3: this could never happen again.
Speaker 2: Not at all. It's very like alarming.
Speaker 3: Yes, So currently the common Rule, that's what it's called.
Speaker 3: It's the code from the Department of Health and Human
Speaker 3: Services that details the protection of human subjects, basically laying
Speaker 3: out the requirements for RB, institutional review board review, and
Speaker 3: everything that pertains to the ethics of human subjects. Research
Speaker 3: in the United States at this point in time still
Speaker 3: allows for the use of biospecimens without informed consent so
Speaker 3: long as they are deidentified. So no longer can you
Speaker 3: take a cell and call it HeLa, thereby knowing that
Speaker 3: it came from Henrietta Lax. But you could take a
Speaker 3: tissue sample from someone, slap on a number that isn't
Speaker 3: like their medical record number, but is just some their number,
Speaker 3: and thereby make it deidentified so it has no association
Speaker 3: with them without ever telling them. The problem is, yeah,
Speaker 3: that that is not keeping up with the times today.
Speaker 3: You could sequence a genome from that cell and have
Speaker 3: all of that genetic information, and especially when you think
Speaker 3: of how many people swab their cheeks and then send
Speaker 3: in their DNA to be sequenced to all of these
Speaker 3: different companies. Then you have that information and can compare
Speaker 3: it across these databases. In light of how much technology
Speaker 3: has progressed, that type of allowance for allowing the use
Speaker 3: of biospecimens without informed consent, it's problematic. There are some
Speaker 3: new regulations that have come into play that say that
Speaker 3: if there is going to be any genomic innunalysis of
Speaker 3: human data, then you do have to obtain informed consent.
Speaker 3: But that's still just one piece of it. So really,
Speaker 3: this is even though this was last reviewed in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: which wasn't that long ago. Yeah, it's still out of
Speaker 3: date at this point.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, we know that technology moves faster than ethics,
Speaker 2: ethics and laws, but like this isn't the writing has
Speaker 2: been on the wall right for a very long time.
Speaker 2: It was more than on the wall in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. Yeah, I think, you know. The good thing
Speaker 3: is so twenty twenty was Henrietta LAX's one hundredth.
Speaker 2: One hundredth anniversary of the day she was born.
Speaker 3: Right, And so I think that, you know, because of that,
Speaker 3: there was like a large amount of celebration because of that,
Speaker 3: And I think that more and more we are having
Speaker 3: these conversations, right, But like you said, Aaron, people are
Speaker 3: only just now barely beginning to actually put their money
Speaker 3: where their mouth is, both literally and figuratively, to make
Speaker 3: substantial change in the way that we deal with ethics
Speaker 3: in human research studies. There have been two or three
Speaker 3: institutes in the US and the UK that have made
Speaker 3: either a single large donation or have committed to make
Speaker 3: donations to the Henrietta Lax Foundation every time that they
Speaker 3: develop new cell lines from HeLa cells. The head of
Speaker 3: NIH also got a large grant and is donating a
Speaker 3: portion of it to the foundation. So people are kind
Speaker 3: of just finally starting to recognize that because of the
Speaker 3: impact that these sales have had, like there needs to
Speaker 3: be reparations back essentially for sure. Yeah, but it's still
Speaker 3: not nearly at the point yet that it needs to
Speaker 3: be no, right, but it's at least a start.
Speaker 2: It's a start. It's a start, just a delayed start.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to make this episode in large part
Speaker 3: just to kind of get this story more press so
Speaker 3: that people can really hear about it, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people have asked for us to cover it. But
Speaker 3: we also wanted to put our money where our mouth
Speaker 3: is So we also made a donation to the Henry
Speaker 3: Lax Foundation. Yeah, so small step, but a step nonetheless
Speaker 3: a step.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So with that sources sources.
Speaker 2: My source list was very short for this episode. Primarily
Speaker 2: I use the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca
Speaker 2: Sclute and a few articles here and there that I
Speaker 2: will post on our website. I'm jealous, Aaron, I have
Speaker 2: a long list of articles because I had to learn
Speaker 2: all about you know, tulamers and things. But I'll post
Speaker 2: the full list of all of the sources that I
Speaker 2: used if you want to learn more about the cell
Speaker 2: cycle and cell lines and also what we use HeLa
Speaker 2: cells for today and kind of the future of cell
Speaker 2: culture and cell lines. On our website This podcast will
Speaker 2: Kill You dot com under the episodes tab, you can
Speaker 2: find the fullest of our sources for this episode and
Speaker 2: every single one.
Speaker 3: Of our episodes.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for
Speaker 2: this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 3: Thank you to the Exactly Right Network, of whom we
Speaker 3: are extremely proud to be a part.
Speaker 2: And thank you to you listeners for listening. Yeah for
Speaker 2: recommending this episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we hope that it lived up to your hopes
Speaker 3: and dreams and expectations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, until next time, wash your hands.
Speaker 3: You filthy animals.
Speaker 2: Obe o b u b o o b