Pioneering Cell Culture Techniques and Challenges

Key Insight

The Gey lab in 1951, resembling an industrial kitchen, was equipped with deep sinks, large freezers storing biological samples like blood and tumors, and cages of experimental animals, where 21-year-old assistant Mary Kubicek processed tissue samples. A primary hurdle in cell culture was determining and supplying precise nutrient requirements, leading to the continuous development of the 'witches' brew' Gey Culture Medium. This medium included ingredients such as chicken plasma, calf fetus puree, special salts, and human umbilical cord blood. George Gey established a bell-and-cable system to the Hopkins maternity ward for cord blood collection and made weekly trips to slaughterhouses to obtain cow fetuses and perform the Margaret-developed Gey Chicken Bleeding Technique by inserting a syringe into a chicken's heart.

Contamination by bacteria and microorganisms from hands, breath, or dust was the most significant obstacle to successful cell culture. Margaret Gey, a surgical nurse, specialized in sterility and became the lab's crucial backbone, instructing George and all personnel in essential contamination prevention methods. She enforced rigorous cleanliness, hiring Minnie specifically for glassware washing using only Gold Dust Twins soap, for which Margaret once bought an entire boxcar when its discontinuation was rumored. Margaret's strict oversight included patrolling the lab, meticulously inspecting glassware for smudges, and loudly reprimanding Minnie to ensure unwavering adherence to sterile procedures.

Mary rigorously followed Margaret's rules, donning protective gear before entering one of four 5-foot airtight cubicles, hand-built by George Gey with freezer-like doors to prevent contaminated air. Inside, Mary sterilized the space with hot steam, hosed the cement floor, scoured the workbench with alcohol, and used a Bunsen burner flame to sterilize test tubes and a used scalpel blade due to budget limitations. After preparing Henrietta's cervical tissue by slicing it into 1 mm squares and placing them on chicken-blood clots in test tubes, labeling them 'HeLa', Mary transferred them to George Gey's innovative 'whirligig'. This roller-tube culturing machine, built from junkyard scraps, was a large wooden drum rotating slowly at two turns per hour, designed to keep the medium in constant motion, mimicking body fluids to deliver nutrients and remove waste. George Gey, born in 1899, whose resourcefulness stemmed from a childhood in a Pittsburgh steel mill, financed his biology and 8-year medical degree through carpentry and masonry, even constructing a time-lapse microscope camera from scraps to film cell growth.