Youngner's role in polio vaccine a springboard to success

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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05094/482532.stm

Youngner's role in polio vaccine a springboard to success

Monday, April 04, 2005

By Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The development of the polio vaccine was the highlight of Julius Youngner's

career. Yet it was just a beginning.

Youngner left Jonas Salk's staff to join the University of Pittsburgh

School of Medicine's Microbiology Department in 1957, and became its

chairman in 1966.

His paper on using the enzyme trypsin to break up clots in monkey cell

cultures, which made them practical for growing polio virus in the lab,

remains one of the most widely cited in the field, says his colleague, Pitt

microbiologist Whitaker-Dowling.

And then, in the early '60s, Youngner " basically discovered gamma

interferon, " a component of the immune system that is now used to treat

malignant melanoma and other cancers.

His first wife, Tula, whom he met in college, died in 1963. Youngner then

married the former Rina Balter, an art historian, and they live today in

Squirrel Hill.

Much of Youngner's later research has focused on the flu and particularly,

inhalable flu vaccine.

It goes back to some work Youngner had done in cell cultures with a farm

animal virus called VSV. He discovered that it was possible to develop a

weakened form of the virus that also was a dominant mutant. That meant that

when the mutant was mixed with the wild-type virus, the mutant interfered

with the wild virus, halting its growth.

It turns out that the weakened flu virus used in an inhalable flu vaccine

developed by the University of Michigan -- the vaccine now marketed as

FluMist -- also is dominant mutant.

Youngner and Whitaker-Dowling obtained some of the vaccine from Michigan

and found that it could interfere with virtually any wild strain of

influenza type A.

" We realized this vaccine was not only a good vaccine, but it was actually

an antiviral drug, " she said. In other words, it not only could prevent a

flu infection, but could halt it after it had started.

That's significant, Youngner said, because it might be the best hope for

stopping any future flu pandemic, such as the 1918 killer flu, or the avian

flu now emerging in southeast Asia.

As of yet, however, the idea of using this weakened flu virus to stop an

epidemic has not gained acceptance by others in the field.

But a company in Fort , Colo., Heska Corp., did approach Youngner

and Whitaker-Dowling about developing an inhalable, live-virus vaccine for

horse flu. It was licensed in 1999 and has proven so effective " we actually

may eliminate the equine strains of influenza from horses -- it could cease

to exist, " she said.

Youngner also has become involved in ethical issues in science, serving on

a federal appeals panel in 1996 on the highly publicized " Baltimore case. "

The appeals panel overturned an earlier determination that an immunologist

in the lab of Nobel laureate Baltimore had falsified data. He also

serves as chairman of the ethics committee for the American Society of

Microbiology.

Perhaps because of his own experience with Salk, who was stingy in giving

credit to colleagues, Youngner has a reputation for being generous with his

staff and junior faculty. " He lets people develop, " Whitaker-Dowling said.

" A lot of people don't do that in their lab; they're reluctant to let them

shine. "

As a consequence, many staff members stayed with him for dec

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

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