Henrietta Lacks' family settles out of court with Thermo Fisher

The family of Henrietta Lacks has reached a settlement with the biotechnology company that profited from her cells.

'HeLa' cells originated from the cervical tumour of Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951. Her family had sought recognition and compensation for the commercial use of Lacks' cells, to which she never consented. In 2021, the estate of Henrietta Lacks filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher in a federal court in Baltimore (see BioNews 1117), claiming that Lacks' family had 'not seen a dime' from the profits generated from the cultivation of the HeLa cell line.

A statement released by the lawyers representing the Lacks family read: 'Members of the family of Henrietta Lacks and Thermo Fisher have agreed to settle the litigation filed by Henrietta Lacks' Estate... The terms of the agreement will be confidential. The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court'.

The cells originated from a biopsy of Lacks' cervical cancer, taken when she was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1951. She did not give consent for them to be used to create a cell line, but the collection and use of patient cells in research was standard practice at Johns Hopkins at the time. She died as a result of the cancer aged 31.

HeLa cells possess the ability to divide indefinitely outside the human body, making them the first immortal human cell line. Their remarkable properties have revolutionised scientific research and have been extensively used in developing cancer treatments and the polio vaccine, significantly advancing medical knowledge and understanding.

Despite their contribution to science, the Lacks family had received no compensation or acknowledgment for the widespread use of HeLa cells. They did reach an agreement with the National Institutes of Health in 2013, which granted them certain rights and control over the usage of the DNA code extracted from HeLa cells.

Thermo Fisher made multiple attempts to have the case dismissed, citing the expiration of the statute of limitations. However, the Lacks family lawyer Ben Crump argued that the statute of limitations had not elapsed as the cells derived from Henrietta Lacks' genetic material were still actively being replicated.

On what would have been Lacks' 103rd birthday, her grandson, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr, said 'it could not have been a more fitting day for her to have justice and for her family to have relief. […] It was a long fight, over 70 years, and Henrietta Lacks gets her day.'