University of Pittsburgh. Health Science News Bureau.

Jonas Edward Salk was born in New York City on October 14, 1914. He attended the City College of New York and received his MD from New York University. Shortly afterward he began a career in medical research with an emphasis on virology and epidemiology. Salk accepted a research appointment at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1947 and began work on the polio vaccine the following year. The Vaccine Advisory Committee of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis highlighted the effort of Salk's research team in a joint 1954 conference report with the United States Public Health Service entitled "Poliomyelitis Vaccine Types 1,2, and 3: Recommendations of Vaccine Advisory Committee of National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis." Salk began human trials in 1954 and the vaccine was declared viable for mass production in April 1955. After his work at the University of Pittsburgh, Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in LaJolla, California, in the 1960s and spent the remainder of his medical career working on a vaccine for HIV, co-founding the Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin to address the disease. Salk died in LaJolla at the age of 80 on June 23, 1995. Until the creation of the poliomyelitis vaccine, polio was known as a disabling and potentially fatal illness. Salk worked on developing a polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh's Virus Research Laboratory, now Salk Hall, Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases, from 1948-1955. Research centered on the use of a "killed" virus, which Salk argued was safer, rather than a live culture of the polio vaccine that had been used by other researchers. Crucial to the development of the vaccine was a rapid color test designed by microbiologist and Salk team member Julius Youngner. The test measured the amount of the virus in living tissue, and allowed researchers to track the affects of the vaccine on the virus. Youngner also shaped techniques used in trypsinization, the process used to grow the polio vaccine in large quantities which enabled research and testing of the vaccine on a large scale. Support by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis aided Salk in his research. Formed in 1938, the foundation began a campaign in earnest to eradicate the disease and supported Salk's team through the vaccine trials. After a series of human trials in 1954, which included Salk and his family, the vaccine was pronounced "safe, effective and potent," on April 12, 1955. The popularity of the vaccine took a hit during the "Cutter Incident," when Cutter Laboratories mixed a live strain of the virus into the vaccine batches the lab was manufacturing. The incident resulted in cases of permanent paralysis and five deaths.