On Oct. 28, 2024, the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine, together with descendants of Henrietta Lacks, broke ground on the future site of the building named in honor of Mrs. Lacks, the Baltimore County woman whose HeLa cells have contributed to medical advancements around the world.

The new 34,000-square-foot building will adjoin Deering Hall, the historic home of the Berman Institute of Bioethics. The building will support multiple programs of the Berman Institute, The Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and will house flexible program and classroom space for educational, research and community-use purposes.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a tobacco farmer from Virginia died from cervical cancer, and a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore used cells from her tumor to create the first immortal line of human cells to be used for future medical research, called the HeLa cells — without her consent.