# @squarerootacademy on Instagram - **Type:** Image - **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CpQNAT3pjoo - **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/6940718-squarerootacademy-instagram - **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/d9a0021459.jpg - **Posted:** 2023-03-01T16:34:07.000+00:00 - **Account Owner:** Square Root Academy (@squarerootacademy) — https://gondola.cc/squarerootacademy ## Caption Happy Women’s History Month! Throughout the month we’ll be highlighting the stories of the women in STEAM that have made history and are still leaving legacies that have truly impacted the world! Today we’re starting with Henrietta Lacks! In January 1951, a few months after giving birth to her fifth child, Henrietta Lacks, a 30-year-old Black woman, became concerned about a lump on her cervixTrusted Source. This, and unexplained vaginal bleeding, led her to seek medical attention. She went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the only hospital in the area that would provide treatment to Black people at that time. Doctors there diagnosed a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer. The standard treatment at the time was radium therapy. During her first treatment, under sedation, the surgeon took a tissue sample from her tumor. He passed this on to the head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins. The cells that doctors took from Henrietta’s tumor were then placed in a culture medium, labeled “HeLa” to identify them. The researchers expected that, like most cell samples, they would multiply a few times, then die. In the lab, the HeLa cells not only remained alive, but multiplied at an astonishing rate. Some 70 years on, the cell line from the original HeLa cells is still proliferating. In that time, more than 11,000 research publications have involved HeLa cells. In 1953, two researchers from Tuskegee University cultured HeLa cells, and mass-produced them for use throughout the United States in the development of the first successful polio vaccine. #womenshistorymonth#womenshistory#henriettalacks#cellresearch#cells#blackhistory#womenmakinghistory#herstory#stemeducation#stem#womeninstem#womensteam ## Stats - **Views:** 0 - **Likes:** 0 - **Shares:** 0 - **Comments:** 0 ## Tags cells, stem, herstory, cellresearch, stemeducation, womenshistory, womenmakinghistory, henriettalacks, womensteam, womeninstem, womenshistorymonth, blackhistory --- Copyright (c) Gondola