Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease.
17 Facts About Albert Sabin
2.
Albert Sabin graduated from high school in Paterson, New Jersey.
3.
Albert Sabin began university in a dentistry program, but was interested in virology and changed majors.
4.
Albert Sabin received a bachelor's degree in science in 1928 and a medical degree in 1931 from New York University.
5.
In 1983, Albert Sabin developed calcification of the cervical spine, which caused paralysis and intense pain.
6.
Albert Sabin revealed in a television interview that the experience had made him decide to spend the rest of his life working on alleviating pain.
7.
Albert Sabin trained in internal medicine, pathology, and surgery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1931 to 1933.
8.
At Cincinnati's Children's Hospital, Sabin supervised the fellowship of Robert M Chanock, whom he called his "star scientific son".
9.
Albert Sabin went on a fact-finding trip to Cuba in 1967 to discuss with Cuban officials the possibility of establishing a collaborative relationship between the United States and Cuba through their respective national academies of sciences, in spite of the fact that the two countries did not have formal diplomatic ties.
10.
Albert Sabin later moved to the Washington, DC, area, where he was a resident scholar at the John E Fogarty International Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
11.
Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine based on mutant strains of polio virus that seemed to stimulate antibody production but not to cause paralysis.
12.
The Albert Sabin vaccine worked in the intestines to block the poliovirus from entering the bloodstream.
13.
The first industrial production and mass use of oral poliovirus vaccine from Albert Sabin strains was organized by Soviet scientist Mikhail Chumakov.
14.
The mass immunization techniques that Albert Sabin pioneered with his associates effectively eradicated polio in Cincinnati.
15.
The Albert Sabin vaccine became the predominant method of vaccination against polio in the United States for the next three decades.
16.
Albert Sabin developed vaccines against other viral diseases, including encephalitis and dengue.
17.
Albert Sabin refused to patent his vaccine, waiving commercial exploitation by pharmaceutical industries, so that the low price would guarantee a more extensive spread of the treatment.