[ad_1]
Peter Salk still remembers the unease he felt when his father came home from work one day in May 1953 and quickly started boiling a set of needles and syringes on the kitchen stove.
With several years of research and promising results in monkeys feeding high hopes, Dr. Jonas Salk had brought a still-experimental vaccine candidate from his laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh to his home in Pine. His family would become one of the first humans in the world to test a shot at the mysterious polio virus that kills and kills children.
“I’m sure my father told us (the importance of) what was happening,” said Dr. Peter Salk, 76, professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at Pitt and president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, speaking on behalf of phone from your California Home. “I … I just wasn’t happy with the idea of having another chance.”
Peter Salk was 9 years old. He had no idea of the medical history he and his family were making, or the millions of lives that would benefit.
All he knew was that, like many children his age, he hated needles, so much so that he had previously ducked and hidden behind the kitchen wastebasket to avoid getting one.
Standing next to his two brothers, he prepared for the injection. Two weeks later, they received a second dose as they were photographed to generate publicity for the March of Dimes, which was injecting millions of dollars into polio research.
“The goal was to demonstrate my father’s confidence in the vaccine,” said Salk. “But … it was also, on my father’s side and on my mother’s side,” let’s protect these children. “
Last month marked the 66th anniversary of the day the first inoculations began in nearly 2 million children who received the Salk candidate vaccine in 1954. By 1955, the pivotal public health experiment was considered a success, and the vaccine proved be safe, powerful and 90% effective in thwarting polio.
The achievement put Pittsburgh on the global map as a leader in cutting-edge medical research and set the stage for decades of investment and advancement in Pitt’s vaccine research capabilities. As the nation faces the covid-19 pandemic, Pittsburgh scientists have joined the global race to stop the spread of another disease that horrifies the world.
“Pittsburgh has such a tremendous track record in infectious disease research. There are people who work on the flu, there are people who work on the viruses that cause cancer, there are people who work on HIV. There is a phenomenal cohort of people at the University of Pittsburgh, and that’s what attracted me, “said Paul Duprex, a virologist who took the helm last year as director of the Pitt Vaccine Research Center.
As of Saturday, more than 53,000 deaths were attributed in the US USA To coronavirus disease, with more than 10,000 nursing home-related deaths. The White House coronavirus task force earlier this month projected that the pandemic could kill more than 100,000 Americans by this summer.
“Developing a vaccine for this particular virus is possibly one of the most important things we will have to do in the years to come,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biological Products at the Food and Drug Administration. Evaluation and research. “It is not unlikely that we can see a second wave or even a third wave. … We have to do it right and do it as quickly as possible. “
Like last month, about 175 vaccine candidates are at various stages worldwide, with at least four efforts now conducting human clinical trials, including with patients in Philadelphia, Seattle and Kansas City, Missouri, reports the Coalition for Outbreak Preparedness Innovations. The researchers say the first phase of human clinical trials on healthy volunteers in the Pittsburgh area could begin in the coming months.
“It costs money, time, and patience, so there will be a huge reduction in candidates entering Phase 1 trials right now,” said David States, chief medical officer at Texas-based Reinvent Biologics. “A significant number of them will probably not show excellent responses and will not be pursued further.”
The FDA is tracking at least 86 different active approaches among pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers, and scientists around the world.
“We expect about two dozen more to enter clinical trials for this summer and early fall,” said Marks.
Experts agree that bringing a vaccine to market will take at least 12 to 18 months, and perhaps longer. The top contenders bill will raise more than $ 1 billion each.
“We need to vaccinate basically the entire world population, because everyone is at risk of contracting this virus, so that production is on a very massive industrial scale.” That is going to take some time. We will confront this virus for the foreseeable future without a vaccine, “said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert and academic at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.” There may be people who have seen movie “Contagion”, and the vaccine is developed before the credits come. That’s not what happens in real life. “
Dr. Anthony Fauci and other experts have warned that mass gatherings, including sporting events and concerts and live performances, should probably not be resumed until a covid-19 vaccine is ready for mass distribution.
“Just think about contact tracing that a health department would have to do after a Steelers game,” Adalja said. “That could be too much for any health department.”
How Salk’s Search Differs from Breed for the Covid-19 Vaccine
Much has changed in terms of medicine, technology, and FDA regulations on vaccine development since Salk’s search in the 1950s. Scientists today, for example, generally can’t begin to test their experiments on their own children. .
“In 2020, it is much more difficult to do that kind of self-experimentation, although it does occur,” said Adalja. “There are many concerns that the FDA would have regarding human research subjects. Was there informed consent? Are they part of a proper judgment? All of that would be something that probably wouldn’t happen as easily as it could in the 1950s. ”
Scientists also have much more technology and methods available, with the covid-19 genome sequence mapping within a few weeks of the first samples studied in early January.
“It is remarkable how fast we are moving,” States said, noting that it took nearly five months to pin down the sequence of the SARS 1.0 virus genome in the early 2000s.
However, lessons can be drawn from Salk’s discovery, as well as from vaccine milestones achieved in recent decades. Perhaps most importantly, developing a safe vaccine is a slow and painstaking process, but doing so is critical to achieving long-term goals of saving lives, lessening the severity of a communicable disease, and ultimately annihilating it completely.
“Vaccines really do work. Vaccines are really important. Vaccines have led to the eradication of diseases, “said Duprex. “Smallpox no longer exists due to a vaccine. The polio virus left the United States due to a vaccine. Measles has been significantly reduced due to a vaccine. “
Although less fatal and prevalent than covid-19, polio fueled intense fear and anxiety in homes across the country. It did not cause stops, but it changed daily life for many. Pools and closed cinemas. Parents-to-be purchased specific polio insurance policies.
At its peak in 1952, polio paralyzed over 21,000 children in the United States.
“People were terrified because there was no way to predict when polio would strike, where it would strike, what cities it would strike,” said Peter Salk. “There was no rhyme or reason why children would become infected, paralyzed, and people were just scared.”
Mimi Blake, 67, of Pitcairn, was just 9 months old when she contracted polio in 1953.
He can’t know how, but his parents thought he could have contracted the disease, which spreads from person to person, from another child in the neighborhood. She was taken to the Pittsburgh Municipal Hospital for Communicable Diseases, where doctors were not initially sure that she survived.
“I was one of those people who had the worst polio,” said Blake. “They had an iron lung in the room in case I needed it.”
Despite needing braces, crutches, and later a wheelchair to get around, Blake would continue to excel in school. She eventually earned a degree in English from Carnegie Mellon University in the 1970s and then worked as a technical editor for the U.S. Steel.
Blake’s room as a baby in the Municipal Hospital Building, now called Salk Hall, was upstairs, where Dr. Jonas Salk was testing his inactivated polioviruses on animals like mice. Salk was one of the first to use a “killed” virus instead of a live one, and showed that it could work just as well while presenting fewer risks.
“I am one of the people who hopes that if we get a covid-19 vaccine, even people who are anti-vaxxers will get the vaccine,” Blake said. “Many of them will not receive the polio vaccine, and I am concerned that I will return to this country.” I don’t think they realize how bad it could be. “
Multiple Covid-19 vaccine efforts are now happening simultaneously on the Oakland campus of the University of Pittsburgh.
The first to move forward, called the “PittCoVacc,” works the same way as the current flu vaccine: pieces of laboratory-made viral protein, called antigens, are introduced so that the body begins to develop immunity. In animal experiments, the vaccine generated an increase in antibodies against the new coronavirus.
Separately, Duprex and a team of 146 people working in a biocontainment laboratory study covid-19 disease and antigen models after becoming one of the first in the United States to receive samples of covid-19 in mid February.
The news of Salk’s polio vaccine came out on April 12, 1955, when the front page of The Pittsburgh Press proclaimed, “Polio has been conquered.”
“It was an extraordinary moment,” Peter Salk recalled. “That moment from 10 o’clock in the morning … it was incredible. The church bells rang, the factory whistles blew, the children were taken out of school. It was an absolute euphoria by the people in this country because this enormous fear that they had been living for so many years just got up. “
Today, there are those who regret that modern medical heroes do not tend to receive such praise.
“In 2020, we have lost respect for scientists in a way that we did not in the 1950s,” said Adalja. “I think people should be waiting to hear about vaccines the same way they expect to hear about a new iPhone, and that people should be cheering for vaccines as great technological wonders.”
[ad_2]
