A Closer Look: The Polio Vaccine
Because of the polio vaccine, 1.5 million childhood deaths have been averted and 18 million people who otherwise would have been paralyzed can walk today.
While vaccine candidates were developed as early as the 1930s, the earliest versions proved dangerous and led scientists to take a new approach. In 1936, scientists at the Rockefeller Institute were the first to successfully grow poliovirus in a culture of fetal brain tissue. Over the next two decades, scientists refined the process using different types of fetal tissue and different strains of the virus. Eventually, this work led researchers to a breakthrough which allowed them to grow the virus in test tubes without nervous tissue. This discovery, along with Jonas Salk’s work at the University of Pittsburgh to propagate the virus using kidney cells from primates, made the development of a safe and effective vaccine possible.
But the role of fetal tissue in this remarkable advancement didn’t stop at development. Since the 1950s, virologists have used fetal cells to propagate polio for vaccines, including those still in use today.