Despite the many scientific advances HeLa cells have helped bring about, the extremely virulent cells have also been the cause of a significant amount of uncertainty and concern. In fact, the cells are so powerful and reproduce so quickly that by the late 1960s HeLa cells had invaded many other cell lines used in research. The problem went on, however, without the knowledge of the scientists involved for many years. It was not until 1974 that California researcher Walter Nelson-Rees published a list of scientific studies believed to be tainted by the invasion of HeLa cells. The scientific community was extremely skeptical at first, but ultimately his findings were confirmed and millions of dollars of research, which was originally believed to have been carried out on different cell types, was discredited.

The culture of Hela carcinoma cells appearing in the digital image above was immunofluorescently labeled with anti-human golgin-97 mouse monoclonal primary antibodies followed by goat anti-mouse Fab fragments conjugated to Alexa Fluor 488, in order to target the Golgi apparatus. In addition, the cells were labeled for filamentous actin with Alexa Fluor 568 conjugated to phalloidin, and for nuclear DNA with the ultraviolet-absorbing probe DAPI. Images were recorded in grayscale with a QImaging Retiga Fast-EXi camera system coupled to an Olympus BX-51 microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks provided by Omega Optical. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.