The family of a 1950's poor African-American womanfinally earned some say over the use of her DNA, which was extracted without permission to be used for medical research.
Henrietta Lack died from cervical cancer when she was only 33-years old. Cells from the cervical tumor were removed without consent, but this was not uncommon at the time, the BBC reported.
Scientists discovered the cells could "grow indefinitely" in a lab setting. The cells were used in over 75,000 studies that led to advancements in cancer treatments, as well as fertility treatments and vaccines.
Lack's family didn't have any knowledge of what is known as the HeLa cells until 1973, when a scientist asked one of them for a blood sample to aid in medical research.
The "HeLa" genome "laid the foundations for the multi-billion dollar biotech industry," but the family has never seen a cent.
The Henrietta Lacks Foundation works to help the family with financial aid.
"Henrietta was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells, taken without her knowledge, became one of the most important tools in medicine, with damaging consequences for her family who today can't afford access to the health care advances their mother's cells helped make possible," the foundation said on its website.
The family reached an agreement with the National Institutes of Health, they will not receive any of the money that was generated by their relative's cells, but they will be able to control access to the genetic code to a certain extent. The family will also be given acknowledgement if the DNA is used in scientific studies, the BBC reported.
Researchers hope the agreement will encourage people to donate their genomes to science, the New York Times reported.
"If we are going to solve cancer, it's going to take a movement of tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of patients willing to contribute information from their cancer genomes towards a common good," Dr. Eric S. Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute at Harvard and M.I.T, said. "We are going to need to have ways to have patients feel comfortable doing that. We can't do it without a foundation of respect and trust."
