Jan 29, 2017 2 min read

Henrietta Lacks was undergoing radiation treatments for cervical cancer in 1951 when doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed two samples from her cervix. They did not tell her.

Lacks died later that year at age 31, but part of her lived on – to play a significant role in biomedical research.

Cells from her tumor were found to be more durable than most cells, and a researcher, Dr. George Otto Gey, isolated and multiplied a specific cell to create a strain he called HeLa – a combination of the first two letters of Henrietta and Lacks.

HeLa provided a major boost to research, and one of the earliest beneficiaries was the world. Jonas Salk, at the University of Pittsburgh, used the strain to develop his polio vaccine. Responding to demand, scientists in 1955 cloned HeLa cells for use in studying disease and testing human response to new products and substances. The HeLa strain has been used in the treatment of more than 10,000 patients.

Lacks is a relative of Daisean Lacks, a 10-year-old from Washington who is participating in a DNA-related determination of the ethnic histories of five youngsters in the LeMoyne Center’s after-school programs in East Washington. Daisean’s brothers, Lesae and Chris, are in the LeMoyne programs as well.

An African-American, Henrietta Lacks had a life that was as difficult as it was short. She was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Va., in 1920, lost her mother at age 4 and went to live with a grandfather in a log cabin that had been the slave quarters of a plantation owned by a white ancestor. She gave birth to five children, the first at age 14.

Her family was unaware of HeLa cells until the 1970s.

A best-selling book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” written by Rebecca Skloot, was published in 2010. An HBO film of the same name will air this year, starring Oprah Winfrey as Lacks’ daughter, Deborah, through whom the story will be told. Winfrey also is the film’s executive producer.