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.

What’s Biohaven without its CGRP portfolio? That’s what CEO Vlad Coric is tasked with deciding as he maps out the new Biohaven post-Pfizer takeover.

Pfizer officially scooped up Biohaven’s CGRP assets on Monday, including blockbuster migraine drug Nurtec and the investigational zavegepant, for $11.6 billion. As a result, Coric spun the broader pipeline into an independent company on Tuesday — with the same R&D team behind Nurtec but about 1,000 fewer staffers and a renewed focus on neuroscience and rare disease.

There are some odd-looking purple creatures lurking around the halls of AstraZenca lately. The “Phil” character cutouts are purple, personified eosinophils with big buggy eyes and wide mouths, and they’re a part of AZ’s newest awareness effort to help people understand eosinophilic asthma.

The “Asthma Behaving Badly” characters aren’t only on the walls at AZ to show the new campaign to employees, however. The “Phils” are also showing up online on the campaign website, and in digital and social ads and posts on Facebook and Instagram.

Kite Pharma just got FDA approval to kick off operations at a new manufacturing campus.

The cancer-focused, CAR-T cell therapy player made the announcement Monday, saying that the federal regulatory agency gave the green light to Kite’s 100,000 square-foot, retroviral vector manufacturing facility in Oceanside, CA.

Kite’s global head of technical operations Chris McDonald tells Endpoints News that the facility has been in the works for about four years, after Kite teamed up with its parent company Gilead. Gilead acquired Kite Pharma for just shy of $12 billion in 2017.

As Leo Pharma aims to take on heavyweight champ Dupixent in atopic dermatitis, the company is launching “AD Days Around the World,” an awareness campaign documenting real patient stories across Europe.

The project, unveiled on Monday, spotlights four patients: Marjolaine, Laura, Julia and África from France, Italy, Germany and Spain, respectively, in short video clips on the challenges of living with AD, the most common form of eczema.