Polio vaccine attenuated vaccine strains. In 1958, the National Institutes of Health created a special committee on live polio vaccines. The various vaccines were carefully evaluated for their ability to induce immunity to polio, while retaining a low incidence of neuropathogenicity in monkeys. Large-scale clinical trials performed in the Soviet Union in late 1950s to early 1960s by Mikhail Chumakov and his colleagues demonstrated safety and high efficacy of the vaccine. Based on these results, the Sabin strains were chosen for worldwide distribution. Fifty-seven nucleotide substitutions distinguish the attenuated Sabin 1 strain from its virulent parent (the Mahoney serotype), two nucleotide substitutions
Sabin Vaccine Institute Africa, and the Americas. Sabin is currently working on multiple vaccines for humans including vaccines for Hookworm infection ("Na"-GST-1, "Na"-APR-1), Schistosomiasis ("Sm"-TSP-2), Chagas disease ("Tc"24, TSA-1), Leishmaniasis ("Ld"-NH36, PdSP15), Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)/Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (Pan-β-CoVax), Soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH), and Onchocerciasis (Ov-"103", Ov-"RAL-2"). In 2006, Sabin co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases in order "to raise the awareness, political will and funding necessary to control and eliminate the most common NTDs." Through its work on NTDs, Sabin hopes to reduce poverty caused by these diseases as many of them have been shown to adversely affect