In the early 1950s, Canada faced an alarming polio epidemic that afflicted thousands of children. In an especially bad year, several hundred Canadians died of the highly infectious disease.
A breakthrough came in 1953 when Dr. Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh successfully tested the first safe and effective polio vaccine. But mass-producing the polio virus needed for the vaccine was slow and laborious – the virus had to be grown in infected monkey kidney cells.
Salk turned to the University of Toronto’s Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, a global leader in drug and vaccine production, for help. When it came time to make enough vaccine for a field trial, he sought the expertise of Dr. Leone Farrell (PhD 1933), a biochemist, microbiologist and skilled innovator who had already revolutionized vaccine production with her “rocking method.” This technique vastly improved the yield of the starting material for vaccines.
Farrell adapted her method to grow monkey cells more efficiently, making large-scale production of the polio vaccine possible. The challenge was enormous. This “Herculean task,” as Salk described it, required Farrell to oversee the installation of many custom-built “bottle-rocking machines,” to hire and train staff, and to ensure that the delicate – and potentially dangerous – process went smoothly.
Though no lab workers contracted polio, Farrell later wrote that “everyone thought at least once that they had.”
Her approach – later called the “Toronto Method” – allowed Connaught Labs to produce 2.3 million vaccine doses for Canadian use by 1956, a crucial step toward eliminating polio in North America. Canada was officially certified polio-free in 1994.
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., considered Farrell’s invention so important that it included a prototype reconstruction of her bottle-rocking machine in a polio exhibit that opened in 1958.
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We manage the Connaught Fund here at the University of Toronto but to learn what groundbreaking work was done in these labs and the unsung or unheard of heroes behind the efforts that led to a healthier and more beautiful world was an eye-opener for me. Thank you for letting me in.
P.S. I had a beautiful friend with polio when studying in school. When I would play in the fields, she would cheer me on from the sidelines. No child should ever be sidelined. Thank you, Dr. Leone Farrell.
I was one of those Toronto polio kids when I was 6 and did not know of this wonderful professor's work until now. Thanks to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital, I was able to make a complete recovery, and joined the 1997 graduating class at U of T myself upon completing my doctoral studies. Many thanks for your article!
I am so glad to know this. I had polio in Ottawa in the early 1950s, which left me with a lazy eye that was successfully treated. I remember being vaccinated later at school with all the other children. It was a great example of public health administration.