Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks
Born
Loretta Pleasant

(1920-08-01)August 1, 1920
Roanoke, Virginia, U.S.
DiedOctober 4, 1951(1951-10-04) (aged 31)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Cause of deathAdenocarcinoma of the cervix
MonumentsHenrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School; historical marker at Clover, Virginia
Occupations
Spouse
David Lacks
​
(m. 1941)​
Children5

Henrietta Lacks (born Loretta Pleasant; August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951) was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line making it the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.

Notes

  1. ↑ "In Steve Silberman's Book Review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Nature 463, 610; 2010), ... Your lead-in claims that the death of Henrietta Lacks "led to the first immortal cell line", but that distinction belongs to the L929 cell line, which was derived from mouse connective tissue and described almost a decade earlier (W. Earle J. Natl Cancer Inst. 4, 165–212; 1943). As Silberman notes, Lacks's was the first mass-produced human cell line."

References

  1. 1 2 Batts, Denise Watson (May 10, 2010). "Cancer cells killed Henrietta Lacks – then made her immortal". The Virginian-Pilot. pp. 1, 12–14. Archived from the original on May 13, 2010. Retrieved February 20, 2021. Note: Some sources report her birthday as August 2, 1920, vs. August 1, 1920.
  2. ↑ Skloot 2010, p. 16.
  3. ↑ Butanis, Benjamin. "The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks". Johns Hopkins Medicine. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
  4. ↑ Hayflick, Leonard (March 4, 2010). "Myth-busting about first mass-produced human cell line". Nature. 464 (7285): 30. Bibcode:2010Natur.464...30H. doi:10.1038/464030d.
  5. ↑ Zielinski, Sarah (January 2, 2010). "Cracking the Code of the Human Genome. Henrietta Lacks' 'Immortal' Cells". Smithsonian. Retrieved December 31, 2016.
  6. ↑ Park, William (November 24, 2020). "The young woman who saved millions of lives without knowing". BBC. Retrieved February 9, 2025.