The fam­i­ly of a black woman whose im­mor­tal cells were un­eth­i­cal­ly tak­en from her at Johns Hop­kins hos­pi­tal in 1951 is now su­ing Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic for prof­it­ing from the cells for decades.

The world-fa­mous cell line, known for Hen­ri­et­ta Lacks as HeLa and the sub­ject of a best­selling book about a decade ago, have proven to be in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant in hu­man his­to­ry, help­ing sci­en­tists to make ma­jor strides, from the po­lio vac­cine to in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion.

But the fam­i­ly be­hind the cell line is tak­ing par­tic­u­lar is­sue with the prof­its Ther­mo Fish­er has made thanks to their an­ces­tor’s ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al.

“Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­al­ly sells Ms. Lacks’ cel­lu­lar ma­te­r­i­al, de­vel­ops and man­u­fac­tures cel­lu­lar prod­ucts in­cor­po­rat­ing HeLa cells, and seeks in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights on these prod­ucts, stak­ing a claim to the ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al of Ms. Lacks,” the suit filed in Mary­land dis­trict court on Mon­day says. “Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic has ap­pro­pri­at­ed Ms. Lacks’ ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al for its own pe­cu­niary gain, all with­out pay­ment, per­mis­sion, or ap­proval from the Lacks Es­tate or fam­i­ly.”

While Johns Hop­kins has main­tained that it nev­er prof­it­ed from the cell line, the fam­i­ly has pre­vi­ous­ly sought pay­ment from the uni­ver­si­ty for use of the line. The es­tate’s suit against Ther­mo al­so notes the com­pa­ny’s in­tent “to prof­it from the un­law­ful con­duct” of the Johns Hop­kins doc­tors.

Erin O’Shea

“Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic’s choice to con­tin­ue sell­ing HeLa cells in spite of the cell lines’ ori­gin and the con­crete harms it in­flicts on the Lacks fam­i­ly can on­ly be un­der­stood as a choice to em­brace a lega­cy of racial in­jus­tice em­bed­ded in the US re­search and med­ical sys­tems. Black peo­ple have the right to con­trol their bod­ies. And yet Ther­mo Fish­er Sci­en­tif­ic treats Hen­ri­et­ta Lacks’ liv­ing cells as chat­tel to be bought and sold,” the suit says.

The suit comes as the Howard Hugh­es Med­ical In­sti­tute in Mary­land gave the Hen­ri­et­ta Lacks Foun­da­tion a six-fig­ure gift in 2020, with HH­MI pres­i­dent Erin O’Shea ac­knowl­edg­ing “that we have a long way to go be­fore sci­ence and med­i­cine are re­al­ly eq­ui­table.”

At a press con­fer­ence in Bal­ti­more on Mon­day, one of the fam­i­ly’s lawyers al­so said re­lat­ed claims may be filed against oth­er com­pa­nies prof­it­ing from the HeLa line, ac­cord­ing to the As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Three Senate Democrats are backing an FDA plan to require mandatory prescriber education for opioids as overdose deaths have risen sharply over the past decade, with almost 97,000 American opioid-related overdose deaths in the past year alone.

While acknowledging a decline in overall opioid analgesic dispensing in recent years, the FDA said it’s reconsidering the need for mandatory prescriber training through a REMS given the current situation with overdoses, and is seeking input on the aspects of the opioid crisis that mandatory training could potentially mitigate.

Just as Avoro Capital’s campaign to derail Merck’s proposed $11.5 billion buyout of Acceleron gains steam, Bristol Myers Squibb is leaning in with some hefty counterweight.

The pharma giant is planning to tender its Acceleron shares, Bloomberg reported, which add up to a sizable 11.5% stake. Based on the offer price, the sale would net Bristol Myers around $1.3 billion.

To complete its deal, Merck needs a majority of shareholders to agree to sell their shares.

When John Maher treated the first head and neck cancer patient at Guy’s Hospital in London with his pan-ErbB CAR-T back in 2015, he was among a small club of researchers convinced they had an answer to the challenges that had kept those engineered T cells — wildly successful in hematological cancers — either too dangerous or out of reach for patients with solid tumors.

The field has blossomed since then, with a proliferation of technologies that promise to address any number of challenges identified as unique to solid tumors. And Maher himself has rethought his approach and come up with a new CAR-T platform to generate the next slate of candidates.

The FDA late Wednesday signed off on authorizing the use of heterologous — or what FDA calls a “mix and match” of a primary vaccine series and different booster doses — for all currently available Covid-19 vaccines, in addition to separately authorizing Moderna and J&J boosters.

On the mix-and-match approach, which FDA officials insisted isn’t too confusing in a press conference, the agency offered the example of an 18-year-old who received the J&J shot at least two months ago and may now receive a single booster of the J&J, a half dose of the Moderna, or the Pfizer-BioNTech booster.

David Livingston, the Dana-Farber/Harvard Med scientist who helped shine a light on some of the key molecular drivers of breast and ovarian cancer, died unexpectedly last Sunday.

One of the senior leaders at Dana-Farber during his nearly half century of work there, Livingston was credited with shedding light on the genes that regulate cell growth, with insights into inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that helped lay the scientific foundation for targeted therapies and earlier detection that have transformed the field.