Earlier this month the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) published the DNA sequence of the genome of HeLa cells, the cell line that is widely used for research in virology, cell biology, and many other areas. This cell line was produced from a tumor taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951. Unfortunately the EMBL did not receive permission from Ms. Lacks’ family to publish her genome sequence, and have withdrawn the information from public databases.
The history of HeLa cells has been well chronicled in Johns Hopkins Magazine and by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In early 1951, Ms. Lacks was found to have a malignant tumor of the cervix. During her examination at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, a sample of the tumor was removed and used to produce the HeLa cell line. But Ms. Lacks’ family never learned about the important cells that were derived from her until 24 years after her death.
It is quite clear that permission to publish the HeLa cell genome sequence should have been obtained from the Lacks family. This issue are discussed in an opinion piece by Rebecca Skloot in the New York Times.
I was honored to work with Rebecca Skloot during the preparation of Immortal Life, and I am flattered that Ms. Skloot thanked me in the afterward of the book. I have also written about my work with HeLa cells (that’s me in the photo with a spinner of the cells). You might also be interested in my conversation with Philip Marcus, who was the first to produce single cell clones of HeLa cells.