HeLa cells

The living cells of a woman who died of cervical cancer more than half a century ago could reveal how we might extend our own lifespans.

Secrets of immortality could be tantalisingly close. The woman in question is Henrietta Lacks, whose tragedy has allowed researchers around the world to better understand the links between cancer, when cells seem to be able to multiply indefinitely, and ageing, when they become senescent and lose the ability to divide.

The story of this research dates back to the winter of 1951 when the mother of five underwent a seemingly routine biopsy for a suspicious cervical mass. A portion went to the pathology lab for diagnosis but, unknown to the black 31-year-old, another was diverted for research by two investigators at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

In a review in the journal Nature, Dr Toren Finkel of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, and Manuel Serrano and Maria Blasco in the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Madrid, conclude: "The small part that remained in the laboratory would forever change the course of science."

George Otto Gey and Martha Gey of Johns Hopkins had spent the better part of the preceding two decades attempting to find a human cell that could grow indefinitely in the lab. That search would end with the arrival of the biopsy sample taken from Lacks.

Although Lacks died eight months later, her fast-growing cells still multiply in vials of red liquid held by laboratories around the world. Known as 'HeLa' cells in her honour, there are probably more alive today than in her entire body when she lived and have conferred on her a kind of immortality. To researchers studying human ageing, they pose a fundamental question: If human tissue cells can live indefinitely, why not people?

Her cells help lead to a clearer understanding of the barriers that separate normal cells from their cancer counterparts, says Dr Finkel. "These same barriers now appear to be intimately connected to how and why we age. Perhaps Henrietta's final gift to us is the growing realisation that somewhere within the curse of the cancer cell's immortality there might also lie the secret of how we might understand and extend our own lifespan."

Researchers have been slowly stripping away the many secrets that endow cancer cells with the gift of immortality. One of the most promising lines of research is into telomeres, protective caps that form around chromosomes - bundles of genes - in cells. Every time the cell divides, the telomeres get a little shorter until the cell self-destructs. But cancer cells can rebuild them with an enzyme called telomerase.

On the day Lacks died, George Gey himself appeared on American TV to announce the dawn of a new era in medical research. For the first time, he explained, it was possible to grow human cells continuously in culture. Since then, her cells have become a standard laboratory tool for studying the effects of radiation, growing viruses and testing medications.

Initially, the cell line was said to be named after a "Helen Lane" or "Helen Larson", in order to preserve Lacks's anonymity.

They helped eradicate polio, flew in early space shuttle missions and sat in nuclear test sites around the world. They have been subject to genetic analysis, revealing the presence of a human papillomavirus now thought to cause the disease and that they probably have the same mutations as present half a century ago, helping to answer many scientific questions.

"Undoubtedly, none of these questions were contemplated on that day in October 1951 when Henrietta Lacks's body was laid to rest in an unmarked grave near her family's small tobacco farm," they write in Nature "Unbeknownst to those who gathered in that Virginia field-but as we now know-not all of Henrietta was buried that day."

The family was not asked for consent, a sad commentary on biomedical research in the 1950s, when it was not uncommon for doctors to conduct research on patients without their knowledge. Because Gey had called them HeLa cells, it was only years later that the family only discovered her strange legacy to modern science

Read more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3303912/How-Henriettas-cells-gave-us-new-hope.html

Another interesting read http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html?em A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift by Denise Grady/ NY Times