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Cellosaurus publication CLPUB00507

Publication number CLPUB00507
Authors Pultarova T.
Title HeLa cells: immortal space travellers.
Citation Space Saf. Mag. 7:10-12(2013)
Web pages http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Space_Safety_Magazine_-_Issue_7_-_Spring_2013.pdf
Abstract It was early April 1961. As 27 year old Yuri Gagarin and 26 year old Gherman Titov were getting ready for the historic first manned spaceflight, still unaware of which of them would be chosen to fly first, a team of microbiologists from the Institute of Experimental Biology of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences were keen not to miss this excellent opportunity. The upcoming event meant they could send some new experiments into orbit and start answering the question: what effect does space environment have on cells and tissues? It was not simple scientific curiosity driving them. Everyone involved in the nascent space program was aware that such information would be vital if any future long duration exploration and maybe even colonization of outer space by humans were to be considered. Among the samples they prepared for the journey were cultures of bacteria Escherichia Coli and human cancerous cells known as HeLa. Despite the reality of the Cold War, the team led by microbiologist N.N. Zhukov-Verezhnikov had acquired vials of HeLa cells from their American colleagues several years earlier. In fact, these cells made it to space prior to Gagarin, as they were on board the satellite Korabl-Sputnik 2 in 1960 [1]. HeLa cells were known since 1951 when George Gey, a scientist from the John Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, US, managed to turn tissue taken from a cervical tumor of a 30 year old African American woman into the first immortal line of human cells.
Cell lines CVCL_0030; HeLa