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There were serious outbreaks in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century, compelling scientists to try and find a vaccine. Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing paralysis. Symptoms of polio include flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, and stomach pain. Some people experienced more serious symptoms like paresthesia (feeling of pins and needles in the legs), paralysis (can’t the inability to move part of the body), and meningitis (an infection of the covering of the spinal cord and/or brain). These more severe symptoms caused fear before the vaccine was invented. In the late 1940s, more than 35,000 people were disabled by polio each year.Probably the best-known symbol of polio is the iron lung. Iron lungs were large metal tube-like boxes that provided breathing support for paralyzed polio patients (two photos below). The iron lung was first invented in 1929 by Dr. Phillip Drinker and Dr. Charles McKhann at Boston Children’s Hospital. Iron lungs were temporary, or although sometimes permanent, solutions for polio patients whose paralysis affected their breathing. These more severe symptoms caused fear before the vaccine was invented. There were serious outbreaks of polio in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century; in the late 1940s, more than 35,000 people were disabled by polio each year. Scientists were compelled to develop a vaccine. Both the Salk and the Sabine vaccines came into use in the 1950s and are discussed more fully in this timeline.

Scientists from the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Biologics Research and Review (OBRR), which is what the biologics regulation team was called in the 1980s, continued their long-standing involvement in poliomyelitis work in the early 1980s, investigating inactivated poliomyelitis vaccines that had been superseded by the live-attenuated vaccine in the U. S. since the early 1960s, though the former continued to be used widely in other countries. The Office collaborated with others in studies of the inactivated vaccines, which , collaborating with others to investigate how inactivated vaccines could offer advantages in both cost and dosing schedules and . They also made use of more recent genetic technology in its the assessment of the character of the vaccines. They also worked And along with the World Health Organization to develop , the FDA developed international guidelines for testing live polio vaccine viruses.

Late in 1987, what was now called the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) licensed a more potent inactivated poliomyelitis vaccine. Improvements in cell culture and purification facilitated this new, more effective vaccine requiring three vaccinations instead of four. This vaccine was preferred for unimmunized adults and for children with suppressed immune systems.

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