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HeLa cells 50 years on: the good, the bad and the ugly

Abstract

HeLa cells — the first continuous cancer cell line — have been a mainstay of cancer research ever since their isolation from the aggressive glandular cervical cancer of a young woman more than 50 years ago. Knowledge of almost every process that occurs in human cells has been obtained using HeLa cells and the many other cell lines that have since been isolated. So why does fraud an ignorance surround the use of these and other human cancer cell lines?

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Figure 1: George Gey.
Figure 2

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cervical cancer

head and neck cancer

laryngeal cancer

oral cancer

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Masters, J. HeLa cells 50 years on: the good, the bad and the ugly. Nat Rev Cancer 2, 315–319 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc775

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