PATHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -As a young mother, Henrietta Lacks and her husband were raising five children near Baltimore when she fell ill. She went to Johns Hopkins after experiencing extensive vaginal bleeding and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Despite treatment, it cut her life short on 4 October 1951. She was only 31 years old.

Detailed explanation-2: -In the early 1980s, German virologist Harald zur Hausen found that HeLa cells contained multiple copies of human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18), a strain of HPV later found to cause the type of cervical cancer that killed Lacks.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the past century, Henrietta Lacks has, arguably, done more to advance medicine than any other person. She played a material role in the development of polio vaccines, cancer treatments, HPV vaccines, and mapping the human genome. This young Black woman died from cervical cancer in 1951.

Detailed explanation-4: -She went to Johns Hopkins for help after she experienced severe vaginal bleeding. The sample of cells were taken during a biopsy, according to Johns Hopkins. She was 31 when she died, eight months after she learned she had cervical cancer.

Detailed explanation-5: -In 1985, scientists used HeLa cells to find out that HPV (human papillomavirus), the most common sexually transmitted disease, can cause cervical cancer. The lead researcher behind the work eventually won a Nobel Prize for the discovery, which laid the groundwork for the HPV vaccine to be developed.