HeLa cells

In news– Recently, the chief of the World Health Organization honored the late Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs.

About HeLa cells-

HeLa is an immortal cell line used in scientific research.
It is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line.
The line is named after and derived from cervical cancer cells taken on February 8, 1951, from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American mother of five, who died of cervical cancer in 1951.
The tissue taken from her at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore provided the first human cells to be successfully cloned.
Cell biologist George Otto Gey had found that these cells could be kept alive and developed a cell line.
Previously, cells cultured from other human cells would only survive for a few days but the Cells from Lacks’s tumor behaved differently.
Reproduced infinitely ever since, HeLa cells have become a cornerstone of modern medicine.
In addition to the HPV vaccine, HeLa cells allowed for development of the polio vaccine; drugs for HIV/AIDS, haemophilia, leukaemia, and Parkinson’s disease.
It provided breakthroughs in reproductive health, including in vitro fertilization; research on chromosomal conditions, cancer, gene mapping, and precision medicine; and are used in studies responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The HeLa cells were “foundational” in the development of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, which can eliminate the cancer that took her life.