Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 245

LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 245 Readers can subscribe to FFFF RSS or subscribe to the FFFF weekly EMAIL Question 1 What is a HeLa cell? + Reveal the funtabulous answer expand(document.getElementById('ddet769736162'));expand(document.getElementById('ddetlink769736162')) HeLa cells are an immortal cell line. They were harvested from a patient called Henrietta Lacks (…He La) They are the oldest and most commonly used human cell lines as they can grow indefinitely, be frozen and thawed, divided into batches and shared among laboratories. Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) was an African-American woman who’s aggressive cervical tumour was biopsied at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland in 1951. Her cells were cultured by Georgo Otto Gey.  For years, Dr. Gey, a prominent cancer and virus researcher, had been collecting cells from all patients who came to The Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer, but each sample quickly died in Dr. Gey’s lab. What he would soon discover was that Mrs. Lacks’ cells were unlike any of the others he had ever seen: where other cells would die, Mrs. Lacks’ cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours....
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Frivolous Friday Five George Otto Gey Glanzmann's thrombasthaenia Hela cells Henrietta Lacks NEJM new england journal of medicine Sildenafil smallpox viagra Source Type: blogs