The history of vaccines

1796 – English physician-scientist Edward Jenner inoculates eight-year-old James Phipps with matter from a cowpox sore – proving that inoculating a person with cowpox pus can create smallpox immunity.

1800 – Harvard physician-scientist Benjamin Waterhouse performs first smallpox vaccinations on his four children.

1813 – U.S. Vaccine Agency established – then and now, continues to ensure safety, efficacy of vaccines.

1820 – Drastic decrease in smallpox mortality after vaccination begins.

1879 – French biologist Louis Pasteur develops technology for attenuated vaccines (uses weakened viruses).

1926 – Gaston Ramon, a veterinarian at the Pasteur Institute in France, develops diphtheria toxoid; working independently at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in London, physician Alexander Thomas Glenny does likewise.

1946 – Influenza vaccine approved for civilians.

1957 – Polio vaccine made widely available.

1971 – Combination measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine released after the individual vaccines were released in 1963, 1967, and 1969, respectively.

1990s – Scientists begin exploring how to simplify vaccines using mRNA, discovering it can create a stronger immunity by training the immune system to make antibodies and killer T-cells which kill cells infected with an intruder.

2017 – BioNTech clinical trial in Germany shows mRNA vaccine effective against melanoma.

2018 – Modern plant opens in Massachusetts to manufacture mRNA vaccines for cancer clinical trials.

July 2020 – Moderna publishes Phase 1 and 2 clinical trial results of COVID-19 vaccine.

August 2020 – Pfizer-BioNTech publishes Phase 1 and 2 clinical trial results.

December 2020 – U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues Emergency User Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

February 2021 – FDA issues EUA for viral vector COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson/Janssen.

Source: Northwestern Medicine -