HeLa Cells and Medical Advances

HeLa Cells and Medical Advances

By Nicholas Palumbo

Leukemia

What Type of Leukemia?

There are many types of Leukemia in the world, one specific type affected by HeLa cells is Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.

What is Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia and what causes it?

Also known as CML, this is a form of cancer that starts with abnormal blood-forming cells of bone marrow. Myeloid cells, which create different types of blood cells, are changed. This causes bone marrow to overflow with the CML cells and intrude in the blood stream, these cells get transported all over the body. This is caused by a translocation of chromosome 9 and 22. Leukemia cells do not die and grow out of control.

What are the Symptoms of CML?

Has this research led to any other developments on illnesses?

CML comes with sweating, fatigue, chills, fever, bone and joint pain, increased infection rate, blood clotting, anemia, enlarged spleen, and more.

Yes! The same treatment is being used to develop cures in glioblastoma. What was originally research on Leukemia became more suitable to glioblastoma. In other cases this has been reversed, glioblastoma research led to CML research.

Sources Cited

After Treatment

How many people were affected before and after treatment?

In 1992, about 2 in every 100,000 men and women would be diagnosed with CML. In 2007, the number dropped to 1.5 in every 100,000. Now, in 2013 it was 1.8. Of course there are more treatments available than the specific one linked to HeLa cells, much more common cures like surgery and chemotherapy, etc. which do affect the numbers.

Is there still more research occuring with HeLa cells?

Of course! Myeloid Leukemia is still not completely curable. New research with HeLa cells and microRNAs are still being conducted. MicroRNAs were not known about until relatively recent years which opens up many possibilities of what can be done to cure the disease. HeLa cells have been aiding in what specific miRNAS do.

Connection to HeLa Cells

When and how were these treatments found?

This recent study began in 2005, it occured when an article (published in the same year) stated that HeLa cells have miRNAs that allow apoptosis and cell regulation (#21 included). The experiments performed in this research were done on natural human cell lines, each culture handled differently to have a wider range of results.

What specific treatments were developed based on HeLa?

One relatively new treatment revolves around an antiapoptotic factor, MicroRNA-21, which does not allow apoptosis to commence. This would kill the abnormal cells and relieve the human of the cancer, however because it is antiapoptotic it does not allow for this. A treatment is being developed to stop this antiapoptotic instinct of the microRNA-21. This is related to HeLa because the HeLa line is being used as research. It's results are different than the results being acheived on normal cell lines allowing it to be very informative on what is missing.

How are HeLa cells connected?

One of the most known diseases to be aided by HeLa cells is Leukemia. When researching what diseases were helped by Henrietta Lacks's cells, Leukemia is always included in the list. A lot of research was done with cells related to leukemia.