User:Mmp2818/George Otto Gey

Personal Life
George Otto Gey was a cell biologist who worked at the John Hopkins Hospital and was known for his contribution to science through his work with HeLa cells. He was born in 1899 on July 6 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1921, he obtained his Bachelor's of Science degree in biology from the University of Pittsburg. He worked as a carpenter and a mason to help pay his way through college. Gey was in medical school off and on for eight years, as he kept running out of money to pay for the tuition. After graduating medical school, he went on to become the director of the Tissue Culture Laboratory in the Department Surgery at the John Hopkins Medical School in 1929, and he became the director of the Hopkins Finney-Howe Cancer Research Laboratory in 1947. Within this time frame, in 1933, Gey received his M.D. from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine. From 1933 to 1970, Gey was involved in three institutions, the John Hopkins Hospital, the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the John Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Career
George Otto Gey worked in a tissue lab, known as the Gey Tissue Culture Laboratory at John Hopkins Hospital, where he obtained and studied sample cells from patients. Gey built much of what was within the lab, which he know how to do based on his living circumstances growing up and how he often had to make do with what little he had. He worked with both normal and abnormal cells to study the nature of them and their roles within living organisms. George Otto Gey worked alongside his wife Margaret Gey to find cells that had the ability to infinitely replicate themselves. John Hopkins Hospital is the place where he first came into contact with HeLa cells.

HeLa Cells
On February 8 of 1961, Gey was given a sample of Henrietta Lacks's cells, a patient who was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. The term "HeLa" derived from the first two letters of the patient's first and last name. Unlike other cells he had studied where the cells ended up dying, Gey found that her cells were doubling in vitro at an unusual rate. George Otto Gey was able to obtain a single HeLa cell and grow multiple others from it. He saw the potential in the HeLa cells and believed that the HeLa cells could cure cancer. Because of this new discovery, her cells were used consistently in medical research. Gey distributed HeLa cells to laboratories interested in the cells with no added cost so that her cells could be further studied by other scientists.

HeLa cells were considered to be very powerful and different from any other existing cell used in medical research, as HeLa cells had the ability to reproduce at a very rapid rate. Cells were preserved in a substance known as 'cell culture', and as the cells were being distributed to other labs, cross-contamination oftentimes occurred. Cells could jump from culture to culture, which would contaminate samples and prevent scientists from being able to use these cells for research. Furthermore, scientists sometimes unknowingly worked with HeLa cells when they thought they were working with and studying the cells from another patient or living organism due to mislabeling and misuse.

Controversy Around HeLa Cells
Henrietta Lacks and her family had no idea that her cells were being used in research studies all over the world. Henrietta Lacks's family were not aware that her cells were being used in studies and experiments until twenty-five years after her death. The family found out about the HeLa cells when scientists decided to track down her family members to understand how to fix the contamination issue that was occurring in cell cultures. Henrietta Lacks herself did not give permission for her cells to be used in research.

Gey Culture Medium and the Chicken Bleeding Technique
George Otto Gey and his wife Margaret developed their own cell culture medium that would preserve cell lines, but their greatest obstacle was contamination. George's biology training did not prepare him for contamination issues that may arise in certain instances, so his wife Margaret was the one who educated him on this topic. Their cell culture recipe was constantly changing and being modified, but one recipe contained unusual ingredients such as chicken blood and cow fetuses. This is how he and his wife came up with the "Chicken Bleeding Technique", and the process was eventually recorded for other researchers interested in the technique. The "Chicken Bleeding Technique" was a way to draw blood from that of a chicken. The process involved forcefully pinning down a chicken onto a butcher block and inserting a syringe needle into the chicken's heart. To succeed in this technique, the feet and the neck of the chicken needed to be held down.

Roller Drum Technique
George Otto Gey invented a piece of technology known as the "roller tube technique" in order to preserve the cells, so that he could keep studying them. The huge, metal roller drum constantly rotated the cells in a thick, carefully formulated fluid mixture. The cells were contained in test tubes within the roller drum.

Awards and Accomplishments
George Otto Gey won two awards over the course of his career, one in 1954 and the other in 1956. He won both the Catherine Berkan Judd Award for Cancer Research and the Wien Award for Cancer Cytology. He was one of the founding participants of the Tissue Culture Committee in 1946, which was soon instead known as the Tissue Culture Association in 1949. Gey was the first president of the Tissue Culture Association. In 1994, the name was changed for the third time to the Society for In Vitro Biology. Gey failed to publish or patent much of his work because his main goal in life was to cure cancer.

Death
George Otto Gey died of pancreatic cancer in 1970 on November 8 at the age of 71. To contribute to his legacy and his work in cell biology, Gey left behind remnants of his own cancer for others to study.