This infectious disease is incurable. It was defeated by the vaccines. Its total eradication is on the WHO agenda.
In 1949 J. F. Enders, T. H. Weller and F. C. Robbins working together in a laboratory at the Boston Children's Hospital published the results of their research in the journal Science under the title 'Cultivation of the Lansing Strain of Poliomyelitis Virus in Cultures of Various Human Embryonic Tissues'.
Before them the virus was mostly grown in vivo on monkeys. Enders, Weller and Robbins reached a decisive achievement by doing this culture in a test tube without using nerve cells. Thereafter the strain growth became easy and cheap. Several vaccines developed by other researchers went into mass production in the next eight years.
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to these three virologists in 1954. On December 6 in New York, Sotheby's sells Frederick C. Robbins's Nobel medal and diploma along with offprints of some of his scientific papers including the Nobel lecture. The whole is assembled as lot 164 estimated $ 400K.
unsold