WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY Enders, John F.185•
kept an office there as a consultant. She also accepted a posi-
tion as a research professor of medicine and pharmacology at
Duke University. Following her retirement, Elion has served
as president of the American Association for Cancer Research
and as a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board,
among other positions.
In 1988, Elion and Hitchings shared the Nobel Prize for
physiology or medicine with Sir James Black, a British bio-
chemist. Although Elion had been honored for her work
before, beginning with the prestigious Garvan Medal of the
American Chemical Society in 1968, a host of tributes fol-
lowed the Nobel Prize. She received a number of honorary
doctorates and was elected to the National Inventors’ Hall of
Fame, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National
Women’s Hall of Fame. Elion maintained that it was important
to keep such awards in perspective. “The Nobel Prize is fine,
but the drugs I’ve developed are rewards in themselves,” she
told the New York Times Magazine.
Elion never married. Engaged once, Elion dismissed the
idea of marriage after her fiancé became ill and died. She was
close to her brother’s children and grandchildren, however,
and on the trip to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, she
brought with her 11 family members. Elion once said that she
never found it necessary to have women role models. “I never
considered that I was a woman and then a scientist,” Elion told
the Washington Post.“My role models didn’t have to be
women—they could be scientists.” Her other interests were
photography, travel, and music, especially opera. Elion, whose
name appears on 45 patents, died on February 21, 1999.See alsoAIDS, recent advances in research and treatment;
Antiviral drugs; Autoimmunity and autoimmune diseases;
Immunosuppressant drugs; Transplantation genetics and
immunologyELISA• seeENZYME-LINKED IMMUNOSORBANT ASSAY
(ELISA)EEnders, John F.NDERS, JOHNF. (1897-1985)
American virologistJohn F. Enders’ research on virusesand his advances in tissue
cultureenabled microbiologists Albert Sabinand Jonas Salkto
develop vaccines against polio, a major crippler of children in
the first half of the twentieth century. Enders’ work also served
as a catalyst in the development of vaccines against measles,
mumpsand chicken pox. As a result of this work, Enders was
awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology.
John Franklin Enders was born February 10, 1897, in
West Hartford, Connecticut. His parents were John Enders, a
wealthy banker, and Harriet Whitmore Enders. Entering Yale
in 1914, Enders left during his junior year to enlist in the U.S.
Naval Reserve Flying Corps following America’s entry into
World War I in 1917. After serving as a flight instructor and
rising to the rank of lieutenant, he returned to Yale, graduatingin 1920. After a brief venture as a real estate agent, Enders
entered Harvard in 1922 as a graduate student in English liter-
ature. His plans were sidetracked in his second year when,
after seeing a roommate perform scientific experiments, he
changed his major to medicine. He enrolled in Harvard
Medical School, where he studied under the noted microbiol-
ogist and author Hans Zinsser. Zinsser’s influence led Enders
to the study of microbiology, the field in which he received his
Ph.D. in 1930. His dissertation was on anaphylaxis, a serious
allergic condition that can develop after a foreign protein
enters the body. Enders became an assistant at Harvard’s
Department of Bacteriology in 1929, eventually rising to
assistant professor in 1935, and associate professor in 1942.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Enders
came to the service of his country again, this time as a mem-
ber of the Armed Forces EpidemiologyBoard. Serving as a
consultant to the Department of War, he helped develop diag-
nostic tests and immunizations for a variety of diseases.
Enders continued to work with the military after the war,
offering his counsel to the U.S. Army’s Civilian Commission
on Virus and Rickettsial Disease, and the Secretary of
Defense’s Research and Development Board. Enders left his
position at Harvard in 1946 to set up the Infectious Diseases
Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital, believing this
would give him greater freedom to conduct his research. Once
at the hospital, he began to concentrate on studying those
viruses affecting his young patients. By 1948, he had two
assistants, Frederick Robbins and Thomas Weller, who, like
him, were graduates of Harvard Medical School. Although
Enders and his colleagues did their research primarily on
measles, mumps, and chicken pox, their lab was partially
funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, an
organization set up to help the victims of polio and find a vac-
cineor cure for the disease. Infantile paralysis, a virus affect-
ing the brain and nervous system was, at that time, a
much-feared disease with no known prevention or cure.
Although it could strike anyone, children were its primary vic-
tims during the periodic epidemicsthat swept through com-
munities. The disease often crippled and, in severe cases,
killed those afflicted.
During an experiment on chicken pox, Weller produced
too many cultures of human embryonic tissue. So as not to let
them go to waste, Enders suggested putting polio viruses in
the cultures. To their surprise, the virus began growing in the
test tubes. The publication of these results in a 1949 Science
magazine article caused major excitement in the medical
community. Previous experiments in the 1930s had indicated
that the polio virus could only grow in nervous system tissues.
As a result, researchers had to import monkeys in large num-
bers from India, infect them with polio, then kill the animals
and remove the virus from their nervous system. This was
extremely expensive and time-consuming, as a single monkey
could provide only two or three virus samples, and it was dif-
ficult to keep the animals alive and in good health during
transport to the laboratories.
The use of nervous system tissue created another prob-
lem for those working on a vaccine. Tissue from that system
often stimulate allergic reactions in the brain, sometimeswomi_E 5/6/03 2:12 PM Page 185