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Henrietta Lacks cells are collected
While at John Hopkins Hospital her cells are collected from her without consent. -
George Gey Cultures HeLa cells
Gey successfully cultures the first immortal human cell line from Henrietta. -
HeLa cell factory opens at the Tuskegee institute
The Tuskegee institute with black scientists and technicians, many of them women, to produce trillions of cells. They were shipped to many polio testing centers because HeLa cells were very vulnerable to the polio virus. It helped to create the polio vaccine created by Jonas Stalk. -
HeLa cells are used to find the number of chromosomes
A geneticist in Texas accidentally mixed the wrong liquid with HeLa cells and a few other cells and the chromosomes grew bigger and spread apart allowing scientists to see them clearly. This allowed scientists to diagnose several genetic diseases. -
HeLa Cells are cloned
HeLa cells are the first cells to be cloned -
Freezing HeLa to study there stages and drugs
Scientists were able to freeze HeLa cells without damaging them and the cells would stop in the middle of splitting and metabolizing. Scientists could test to see how certain drugs and study the effects on them. -
HeLa gets combined with mouse cells
HeLa cells combined with cells of a mouse to create the first animal human hybrid. This was heavily demonized by the public because of fears of scientists creating monsters. -
HeLa is found to have contaminated many cultures
HeLa was found to have contaminated many other cell cultures and entirely destroyed them. This lead to better cell culture practices to prevent more damage from being done. -
HPV vaccine
HeLa cells were found to have several strains of the HPV which was used for testing for the HPV vaccine and how HPV causes cancer. -
HIV understanding
Richard Axel was experimenting with HeLa cells and HIV and helped scientists to understand the requirements of HIV to infect a cell, like needing certain DNA from blood.