Q&A with Julius Youngner: member of original polio vaccine research team

By Jace Bridges / Staff Writer for The Pitt News
OCTOBER 7, 2016

Dr. Julius Youngner, part of the polio vaccine research team, works in one of Pitt’s labs. Courtesy of University Library Systems

In the 1940s and ’50s, polio — a viral disease which attacks the central nervous system — affected nearly half a million people worldwide each year, with the disease often paralyzing or killing them. Children and young adults were particularly at risk for the disease.

But then Pitt recruited influenza expert Jonas Salk to form a virus program at the University in 1947, which began an effort to create a killed-virus vaccine for polio that lasted more than seven years.

On April 12, 1955, the federal government approved the vaccine’s use for the public, and the vaccine is still in use today.

Today, only one member of the original research team is still alive. Julius Youngner, now 96 years old, worked on the polio vaccine research team as a virologist and microbiologist. And remains part of Pitt’s faculty as a service professor of molecular genetics and biochemistry.

Youngner sat down with The Pitt News and discussed the historic research team and the ways research has change since his days in the lab with Salk.

Read the complete interview by clicking the button below.