Medical Miracle: The woman died 70 years ago, but her cells are still alive.

Henriett, a poor woman, was diagnosed with cancer in November 1950. She was only 30 years old and was being treated at John Hopkins Hospital, then the main institution of U.S. healthcare that treated poor and African-American patients.

Doctors, without her permission (was not necessary at the time), took a tumor sample and one of the healthy tissue around them, which at one point entered the hands of Dr. George Gay, director of the Inde Cultural Laboratory. He developed some devices that helped to increase laboratory cells, so it started “the <x1 cell growth.

He discovered that some of Henrietta's cells were constantly growing and did not die after certain divisions, so he was able to create a cell line by multiplying them.

In October 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of cancer that had been metastated throughout the body, but its cells, formed by a sample tissue, still live and die in the laboratory. The chain of these cells is immortal he has been preserved for decades and is known as the Hela cell line.

This development of its cells brought about a real revolution in medical research. Thanks to them, scientists came up with the first polio vaccine, its cells were the first to be cloned successfully (1955), and by that moment they had already entered <x0).

They were later used to test for AIDS, the effects of drugs and chemicals, even to treat cancer, and they melted with animal cells, scientists combined Hela cells with mouse cells to create the first hybrid cells of human animals.

By the way, in the 1960s, NASA sent several boat space with Hela stations into space on the 18th Discovery satellite.

According to some data, science has emerged with more than 10,000 patents thanks to immortal cells, and estimates say around 20 tonnes of Hela cells have increased.