HeLa cells and Cell culture

August 12, 2023

Cell culture is the process by which cells are grown in a petridish, in a lab in controlled conditions, outside of their natural environment.
These cells are used in critical and path breaking scientific research to develop drugs, vaccines (polio), study the effects of radiation, how pathogens affect humans, gene mapping
Usually cells cultured in the lab from human cells could be kept alive for only a few days, subject to the phenomenon of cellular senescence, or the cessation of cell division.
However, all that changed when it was discovered that tumour cells from Henrietta Lacks , a patient with cervical cancer, could grow indefinitely in culture.
- An immortalised cell line, simply, is a population of cells from which would normally not proliferate indefinitely but, due to mutations, has achieved the ability to keep on dividing, never reaching the point of senescence.
Henrietta Lacks’ (HeLa) cells were the first human cells to be successfully cloned in 1953 by Theodore Puck and Philip I. Marcus at the University of Colorado.
Since then, HeLa cells have ‘continually been used for research’.