Novartis settles with woman’s estate over use of her “stolen” cells to advance medicine

Novartis has settled a lawsuit brought by the estate of Henrietta Lacks, alleging the pharmaceutical giant unfairly profited from her cells, which were taken from her tumor without her knowledge in 1951 and replicated in the laboratory to enable major medical advances, including the polio vaccine.

Details of the deal, which was finalized this month in Maryland federal court, are not public.

The Lacks family and Switzerland-based Novartis said in a joint statement that they were “pleased to have been able to find a way to resolve this case filed by the estate of Henrietta Lacks outside of court” but would not comment further.

It’s the second settlement in lawsuits filed by the estate that accused biomedical companies of reaping the rewards of a racist medical system that took advantage of black patients like Lacks.

The settlement ends litigation between Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and the estate of Lacks, a mother who died of cervical cancer at age 31 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The 2024 lawsuit had sought from Novartis “the total amount of its net profits obtained from the commercialization of the HeLa cell line,” which the complaint said was grown from “stolen cells.”

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took cervical cells from Lacks in 1951 without his knowledge, and tissue taken from his tumor before his death became the first human cells to continually grow and reproduce in laboratory dishes. HeLa cells have become the cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines, but the Lacks family has not been compensated along the way despite this incalculable impact on science and medicine.

Johns Hopkins said it has never sold or profited from these cell lines, but that many companies have patented methods to use them.

In 2023, Lacks’ estate entered into an undisclosed agreement with the biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. The family’s lawyers argued in that case that the company continued to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known and were unfairly enriched from Lacks’ cells.

There are other lawsuits pending by the Lacks estate. A little more than a week after the estate settled the case with Thermo Fisher Scientific, the estate’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical in federal court in Baltimore, the same venue as the previously settled case. Litigation with Ultragenyx as well as Viatris, a pharmaceutical company, remains active.

The family’s lawyers have indicated that more complaints could be filed.

Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who married and moved with her husband to Turner Station, a historically black community outside of Baltimore. They were raising five children when doctors discovered a tumor in Lacks’ cervix and saved a sample of her cancer cells taken during a biopsy.

While most cell samples died shortly after being removed from the body, his cells survived and thrived in laboratories. They became known as the first immortalized human cell line because scientists could culture them indefinitely, meaning researchers around the world could replicate studies using identical cells.

The remarkable scientific research involved — and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom suffered from chronic illnesses and lacked health insurance — was documented in a best-selling book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” published in 2010. Oprah Winfrey portrayed her daughter in an HBO film about the story.