How long it took to develop 13 vaccines in history

The eradication of smallpox through vaccination is seen as one of the biggest achievements in public health history — but it took several centuries to get there.

The origins of smallpox are unknown, though scientists believe it dates all the way back to the Egyptian Empire at least 3,000 years ago. By the 18th century, colonization spread the disease across the globe. It had a devastating mortality rate of up to 30%.

In 1796, Edward Jenner in the UK created the first successful smallpox vaccine, but it wasn't until the 1950s that vaccine treatments began to effectively eradicate the disease in some parts of the world.

Then, in 1967, a global effort that provided a higher level of vaccine production and advancement in needle technology eventually led to the eradication of the disease by 1980.

To date, smallpox is only one of two diseases to have been completely eliminated around the world through vaccination efforts.

Plague is one of the world's oldest and most lethal diseases, culminating in an estimated 75-200 million deaths in the few years around 1348. But to date, no licensed vaccine is available.

Plague is perhaps most notorious for killing millions of people during the Middle Ages, but the disease is still active in areas around the world. As recent as 2020, a plague outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo attracted international attention.

However, since plague is a disease spread by bacteria, the advent of modern antibiotics can be used as treatment. Even so, researchers believe that vaccination development is the most viable option to prevent the spread of disease in the long term.

Many failed attempts have been made to create a plague vaccine in the past – including one that was made in the US to inoculate soldiers during the Vietnam War.

But in 2018, the WHO created a Plague vaccine Target Product Profile, which listed 17 possible candidates for vaccine approval.

Typhoid fever is a deadly disease that can be spread widely through food and water. Though relatively uncommon in industrialized areas, it remains a significant threat in developing nations throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, according to the WHO.

Two vaccines are commercially available to prevent typhoid fever. After the bacteria responsible for the disease was discovered in 1880, German and British scientists put forth preliminary vaccines in 1896.

In 1909, US Army physician Frederick F. Russell developed the first US typhoid vaccination. By 1911, it was mandatory for all military personnel to get the vaccine. 

Today, Typhoid fever is uncommon in the US and vaccinations are not commonly recommended for routine use.

In 1951, Max Theiler became the first and only scientist to receive a Nobel Prize for the development of a vaccine. His efforts to control yellow fever are widely praised by the scientific community, and he helped to correct years of misled research.

Yellow fever has caused deadly epidemics throughout human history for more than 500 years. By the end of the 19th century, it was a well known threat around the world. But little was known about the disease itself, and early vaccination efforts at the close of the century mistakenly focused on bacterial transmission when it's actually caused by a virus.

In 1918, researchers working for the Rockefeller Institute developed what they thought was the first successful yellow fever vaccination — but in 1926 Theiler proved otherwise and the faulty vaccine ceased production.

Over a decade later, in 1937, Theiler and colleagues created the first safe and effective yellow fever vaccination, which has since become the universal standard.

Influenza has a long, tragic history of killing millions of people worldwide. During the 1918 influenza pandemic, there were no known cures or vaccinations for the virus.

Starting in the 1930s, it took decades of research to understand the complexities of the influenza virus, and it wasn't until 1945 that the first vaccine was approved for use in the US.

In 1942, researchers realized that two main types of influenza viruses occur — influenza A and influenza B, along with multiple new strains of the virus each year. 

But just two years later, in 1947, researchers concluded that the vaccines they already had weren't effective due to seasonal changes in the composition of the virus. Because of this, scientists have to tweak the influenza vaccine every year.

Today, seasonal flu vaccines are designed by the WHO using data gathered from influenza surveillance centers to develop a new vaccination based on the three or four strains most likely to circulate in the upcoming season.

While polio has likely affected human populations for thousands of years, it wasn't until the late 1800s that the disease reached epidemic proportions. At the turn of the 20th century, polio tore through the US, leaving many infected patients paralyzed and disabled for life.

Research to understand polio was gradual for the first few decades. In 1935, a vaccination was attempted, first on monkeys and then on children in California. Though this vaccine yielded poor results, two more decades of research paved the way for the development of vaccines by Jonas Salk in 1953, and Albert Sabin in 1956.

After a trial of more than 1.6 million children, Salk's vaccine was adopted in the US by 1955. Continuous research through the 1980s made way for an even more effective and efficient production of vaccines, and by 1994 polio was eliminated in the Americas.

As recently as 1988, 350,000 people had been paralyzed by the debilitating disease, which mainly affects children. In 2022, there were only 30 cases of polio in the whole world, not including vaccine vaccine-derived cases.

One study estimated that the polio vaccine prevented 24 million people from getting the disease from 1988 to 2022.

Polio could become the third human disease we wipe from the planet. But we've still got a while to go, experts say. 

Anthrax is thought to have been around since 700 BC, but the first clinical account of the disease was recorded in the 1700s, per the CDC.

Throughout the 1800s, scientists conducted a series of studies to determine the disease's origin, how long the bacteria could survive, and how the disease was transmitted through animals. Their conclusions paved the way for the first attempts at a vaccine in 1881. 

In 1937, scientist Max Sterne created a successful anthrax vaccination to be used in livestock, a version of which is still used today, in order to reduce transmission from animals to humans. Then, in the 1950s, the first human vaccine was created and made available for people working in animal processing mills in the United States.

An updated anthrax vaccine was developed in 1970, which is largely what's used to prevent the disease in humans today.

Measles, mumps, and rubella are viral infections that have each caused widespread, deadly disease outbreaks. Throughout the 1960s, individual vaccines were developed for each of them, but a decade later, they were combined into one.

Measles was the first of the three to receive its own vaccine in 1963, followed by mumps in 1967, and rubella in 1969. Two years later, in 1971, Maurice Hilleman of the Merck Institute of Therapeutic Research developed a combined vaccination that would provide immunity for all three viruses. 

"One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella," the CDC states on its website. 

"Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps."

The CDC recommends children get two doses of the MMR vaccine — the first dose between 12 to 15 months of age and the second dose from 4 to 6 years.

Primary varicella infection, commonly known as chickenpox, was misdiagnosed as smallpox until the end of the 1800s.

In the 1950s, scientists distinguished varicella from herpes zoster (shingles), and subsequent research led to the development of the first vaccine for chickenpox in Japan in the 1970s.

The vaccine was licensed for use in the US in 1995.

Shingles, or herpes zoster, stems from the same virus that causes chickenpox. The only two ways shingles can develop is after an initial infection of chickenpox, or (uncommonly) exposure to a chickenpox vaccination, according to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

The connection between shingles and chickenpox was first observed in 1954. Throughout the 1960s, studies indicated that shingles was more common in older populations. But it wasn't until 2006 that the first commercially available vaccine was licensed in the US.

In 2017, the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices started to recommend that adults age 50 or older should be vaccinated for the disease.

Hepatitis B was discovered by Dr. Baruch Blumberg in the latter half of the 1960s. Just a few years later, he created the first hepatitis B vaccine.

Then, in 1981, the FDA approved the first commercially available hepatitis B vaccination, which involved blood samples from infected donors.

Then, in 1986, a new synthetically prepared vaccine that doesn't use blood-based products replaced the original model. 

Since Hepatitis B can cause liver cancer, the vaccine was also considered the first anti-cancer vaccine.

Human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the US, and studies show that more than 80% of women will contract at least one type of the virus at some point in their lives.

HPV is thought to cause more than 90% of anal and cervical cancers, according to the CDC. This can result in thousands of deaths each year. 

The link between HPV and cervical cancer was first made in 1980's, and over two decades of research followed before a viable vaccine hit the market.

The first HPV vaccine was recommended in the US in 2006, and subsequent research has led to the development of two more vaccines since. The CDC said these efforts dropped HPV infections by 81% in young adult women.

Today, recommendations for vaccine dosage depend largely on age.

The COVID-19 outbreak caused billions of people worldwide to go on lockdown — disrupting everyday life — to curb the spread of the highly contagious virus.

The coronavirus resulted in overcrowded hospitals, stressed healthcare workers, and pressure on officials who were pushed to create a vaccine to end the pandemic.

During the early stages of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in front of Congress that a vaccine could be developed by the end of 2020 and available for use in 2021.

In December 2020, Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse, became the first person in the US to receive the jab outside clinical trials.

"As a minority, I wanted to instill confidence in my people that look like me to say that it is safe, be guided by science, don't be afraid," Lindsay told Insider at the time.

As of July 2023, four vaccines have been greenlit in the US: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen, and Novavax. 

More than 13 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, including 676 million in the US.