Jonas Salk and the Invention of the Polio Vaccine

Polio Virus Successfully Grown in Non-Nerve Tissue

While researching the measles and chicken pox viruses, Dr. John Enders and his colleagues Dr. Thomas Weller and Dr. Frederick Robbins attempted to infect human kidney tissue with the polio virus. To their surprise, it was both possible and highly effective for producing cultures that could be used for research.

In addition to discovering that they could grow poliovirus in non-nerve tissue, Enders, Robbins, and Weller also discovered that, as the poliovirus multiplied, it caused a particular change in the cells of the tissue culture. This made it possible to detect the presence of poliovirus in tissue cultures using only a high-powered light microscope.

The discoveries of Enders’s laboratory were important because they made it possible to grow large amounts of poliovirus and because it made it possible to test for the presence of poliovirus in a Petri dish rather than having to inject monkeys with possibly infected material to see if they would develop polio.

In 1954, Enders, Robbins, and Weller received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries.

References:
Rosen, F. (2004). Isolation of Poliovirus — John Enders and the Nobel Prize. The New England Journal of Medicine, 351(15), 1481–1483. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp048202

Wilson, D. J. (2009). Polio. ABC-CLIO.  

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