Question: how many cells have you researched through your carrier life. which has fasinated you most?Why?

Ditte Hedegaard answered on 19 Jun 2014:

Hi,

Thank you for your question!

I’ve worked with a lot of different cells. Most of the cells I work with are ‘cell lines’, which have been generated from humans and animals. After the cells have been isolated from the body, they are manipulated in the laboratory so that they keep on making new copies of themselves and grow really fast just like cancer cells. This is a huge advantage because you will always have new cells to work on, but on the other hand, because they have been manipulated in laboratory they are slightly different from the cells in the body and scientists therefore have to remember that the results they are seeing for the ‘cell lines’ might not be the same as for the cells in the body. So there are advantages and disadvantages working with cell lines.

Ideally you always want to work on cells that has not been manipulated, but unfortunately these doesn’t survive that long outside the body and will usually die within a few days.

In my job I’ve worked with different liver cell lines, skin cell lines and kidney cell lines. One of my favourite skin cell lines is the HeLa cells, which is actually the first cell line in the world. The HeLa cells were taken from a woman called Henrietta Lacks back in 1951. She had cervical cancer and died not long after the cells were taken from her. I think it is really fascinating to think that although Henrietta died in 1951, some of her cells are still alive today and are being used in experiments all over the world. You can read more about Henrietta here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks