The scientist who changed biomedical research by immortalising a woman without her knowledge.
There were no drugs for cancer in the 1920s. It was the knife or radiation, and the outlook for patients was bleak. George Gey knew this when he took up a post directing the Tissue Culture Laboratory at Johns Hopkins make a change.
He was a gentle giant. A weekend fisherman with a penchant for scrapheap diving and a talent for inventing. Hidden away in an old janitor’s office with his wife Margaret, he dreamed of growing cancer cells outside of the body so that he could poke and prod them until they spat out the recipe for a possible cure.
Normal cells die after reproducing 40 or 50 times, but cancer cells divide without limits, growing and growing to form a tumour that eventually breaks apart at the edges, seeding the body with endlessly replicating lumps and nodules. In theory, they should be immortal, if only George could get them to grow — but it was an impossible dream. Human cells, even cancerous ones, didn’t survive in tubes.
Cancer cells grow in clusters, supported by a network of crisscrossed fibres riddled with blood vessels. The cells are used to constant temperatures, an unending supply of nutrients, and a rich flow of oxygen. The body removes waste, sends nurturing growth signals, and clears debris. George wanted to take all of that away and put living tumours in specimen jars so that their biology could be dissected.
He made his test tubes by hand, blowing the glass himself. They needed to be washed between uses, so he stockpiled an entire shipping container of gentle soap thatwouldn’t leave a residue toxic to the cells. For nutrients, George and his wife concocted a blood surrogate using a strange mixture of raw materials. The broth would bathe the cells, supplying food and oxygen and drawing out waste.
The basis of the elixir was blood harvested from fresh placenta. It could be stripped of cells to leave behind a straw-coloured liquid full of nutrients and salts, and there was a ready supply of discarded organs in the maternity ward at the hospital. Whenever a sample became available, a buzzer would sound and Margaret would rush over tocollect it.
To this, the pair would add the crushed remains of a cow embryo, courtesy of the local slaughterhouse, its innards providing a rich mixture of molecules on which the cells could feed. As an extra source of nutrients and support, the cells were provided with a clot of chicken blood, drawn from birds at a local poultry farm. Most survived the donation, and those that didn’t were paid for and eaten.
The final component was a whirling drum that turned once an hour to slosh the liquid over the cells, allowing them to pick up nutrients and discard waste as though blood and tissue fluid were passing inside the body. George made this too, using the pendulum from a clock to keep time.
The couple poured over the lists of operations at the hospital, looking for opportunities to scrub up, enter theatre and collect cancer tissue to put into their tubes. Margaret was a surgical nurse by training. But, time after time, cells that grew vigorously inside patients withered and died in the lab without giving up any of their secrets. For decades, the pair meticulously tended to their experiments, but none lived longer than a few months.
On 9 February 1951, everything changed. Richard Telinde, a professor of gynaecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had heard about George’s work. He wanted to try to grow cells from the cervix in the rolling tubes, and his assistant resident, Dr Ward Coffman, set about collecting samples. George assigned a junior technician, 21-year-old Mary Kubicek, to the project.
It was a Friday lunchtime when George put a small lump of tissue onto Mary’s lab bench. She carefully sliced the sample into cubes, dropped a few into each tube with the nutrient broth and set them rolling. No one held out much hope for their survival, but in the quiet of the drum, the cells started to divide. One became two, two became four, four became eight, and at the edges of each cube, tendrils of new tissue began to form.
Every 24 hours, a new generation of cells sputtered into existence and, within a few days, there were so many that the samples had to be removed, cut up and split into more glass vials to make room. Week after week there were more cells. At last, George and Margaret had achieved their dream. They had made an immortal cell line — a factory for producing living human cells — and they wanted to share it.
George mentored junior researchers in the art of cell culture and he sent vials of cells to other labs so that they could start growing their own. They survived trips by road, rail and air, travelling through the post and in pockets and backpacks, and soon they were multiplying in incubators across the world. And then the breakthroughs started coming.
In Pittsburgh, Jonas Salk had developed a vaccine for polio. During the early part of the 20th century, major epidemics had been sweeping across Europe and the United States, killing thousands and leaving many more with lifelong paralysis. A vaccine could save lives, but it needed to be tested on human cells before it could be trialled in people. George’s lab had createdthe solution. Mountains of human cells could be produced virtually from thin air and, in under a year, the vaccine had been checked. By the 1960s, cases of polio in the US had plummeted.
The cells went on to be used in the development of more vaccines and to examine other infectious diseases. They allowed scientists to explore how cells grow, divide and die and, as George had hoped, they began to give up cancer’s secrets, leading to the development of new treatments. They were the first human cells grown in space, and they led to two Nobel Prizes. More than 60 years later, they are still growing.
Over 90,000 scientific papers have been published as a result of George and Margaret’s pioneering work, but behind the breakthroughs was an untold secret. In February 1951, a 31-year-old woman made the trip to Johns Hopkins Hospital with her family. She sat in the doctor’s office and explained that she had been bleeding and she could feel a knot in her body. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, and she had not long given birth to her youngest son.
Henrietta had travelled 32 kilometres in the rain with five young children in tow because no other hospital in the area would see African-American patients. Her husband, David, was a steelworker, and she a homemaker, the grand-daughter of a tobacco farmer from Virginia. Her family waited in the car as she was told that she had cancer.
A biopsy was taken of her tumour before her treatment began. At the time, there were no rules about what could happen to the spare tissue, and it was handed to George Gey without her permission. He took it to his lab technician and she went back to her family. He watched in wonder as her cells took over his glass tubes, while her family watched in pain as the cancer took over her body. She died on 4 October 1951 and her relatives had no idea that part of her lived on.
Over 20 years later, the wife of her eldest son sat down for dinner with a neighbour; a chance encounter that finally revealed the truth. When George took samples into his lab, he gave them a code made from the first two letters of the patient’s first and last name. Henrietta’s cells were called ‘HeLa’, and her son’s neighbour was a scientist. He recognised the family surname.
At around the same time, they started receiving phone calls from researchers interested in their genes, and from writers interested in their story. Henrietta’s tissue had been taken without her consent and shared without her knowledge, and her genes and medical information were now the subject of worldwide scrutiny. Suddenly, the Lacks family discovered the monumental impact of her involuntary gift.
Henrietta’s descendants have had to battle for the right to privacy and recognition, but the scientist himself wasn’t around to explain — he died of cancer in November 1970, aged 71. One of his last wishes was that his own tumour be immortalised as Henrietta’s had been all those years before, but his request went unfulfilled. Their joint legacy, however, lives on.
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Defining moment - Move to Johns Hopkins (1923)
After completing a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Pittsburgh, George Otto Gey sets up his laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. From their base in a converted office, he and his wife spend decades tinkering with the complex and challenging science of cell culture, perfecting the techniques and equipment needed to grow cells outside of the body as they try to find a long-awaited curefor cancer.
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Defining moment - Growing immortal cells (1951)
Dr Ward Coffman sends George and his team a tissue sample from a patient with cervical cancer — 31-year-old Henrietta Lacks. They place the samples into their tubes and within days the cells start to grow. They continue to divide and divide, becoming the world’s first immortal cell line. This breakthrough forms the foundation of modern medical science, but Henrietta and her family never knew.
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A chance conversation alerts the Lacks family to Henrietta’s immortal cells thanks to their codename — HeLa, from the donor’s first and last names. They are approached by scientists for blood samples and by journalists for stories. As they fight for the right to have Henrietta’s contribution recognised, their story is collected and told by Rebecca Skloot in her bestselling book, 'The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks'
Written by Laura Mears in "All About History", UK, n. 53, June 2017, excerpts pp. 56-59. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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