Julius Youngner

Julius S. Youngner (24 October 1920 – 27 April 2017)[1] was an American Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Medicine and Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at University of Pittsburgh responsible for advances necessary for development of a vaccine for poliomyelitis[2] and the first intranasal equine influenza vaccine.

He is considered "one of the seminal figures in contemporary virology and it's been that way for more than 50 years" by Arthur S. Levine, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences at University of Pittsburgh.

[2] Youngner was an important early pioneer in vaccine development, testing, and government licensing of drugs before allowing them to market.

degree in microbiology at the University of Michigan, Youngner stayed on as a faculty member, and left in 1947 to join the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda.

Upon completion he screened at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and assigned to classified research at University of Rochester School of Medicine on uranium salts.

He proved a method for separation of monkey kidney cells, which led to techniques for large scale production.

[14] or in the words of his colleague: "“Juli figured out how to grow the virus, how to inactivate it, and then he figured how to test the immune response to see if it worked.”[12] Youngner demonstrated the separation of monkey kidney cells using the pancreatic enzyme trypsin, a technique previously proven by the Rockefeller Institute[15] could be applied to high titer virus stocks.

[16] Applying this method to a single kidney "could produce enough raw material for 6000 shots of polio vaccine.

The key to effective inactivation depended upon a color test developed by Youngner, which allowed formalin induced viral protein degradation to be accurately plotted.

From Youngner's work, formalin application for six days was projected to produce only "one live virus particle in 100 million doses of vaccine.