More than 70 years after Henrietta Lacks’ cells were taken without her knowledge, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies has agreed to settle with her family.

Novartis has resolved a lawsuit filed by the estate of Lacks in federal court in Maryland, according to HuffPost. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The lawsuit accused Novartis of unjustly profiting from products developed using HeLa cells — the immortal cell line created from tissue doctors removed from Lacks during treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. She was never told her cells would be used for research, and her family was not informed for decades.

As noted by HuffPost, the lawsuit sought “the full amount of its net profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa cell line,” which the complaint said had been cultivated from “stolen cells.”

HeLa cells became one of the most important tools in modern medicine. Researchers have used them in work tied to the polio vaccine, cancer therapies, gene mapping, IVF advancements, and, more recently, COVID-19 vaccine research. Johns Hopkins has previously stated it did not sell or directly profit from the cell line, but private companies have built commercial products around its use.

In a joint statement, Novartis and the Lacks family said they were “pleased they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of court,” declining additional comment.

This is not the first time the Lacks estate has pursued legal action. In 2023, the family reached an undisclosed settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific after filing similar claims. Additional lawsuits remain pending against other pharmaceutical companies, according to federal court records.

Henrietta Lacks, a mother of five from Virginia who later lived in Baltimore, died at age 31. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Her story — and the ethical failures surrounding the unauthorized use of her cells — gained national attention following Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was later adapted into an HBO film.

The settlement with Novartis represents another step in the family’s effort to hold biomedical companies accountable for profits tied to cells taken from a Black woman without consent during an era when medical ethics routinely excluded Black patients from informed decision-making.

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Fattz & Cher