In 1954, John Franklin Enders and Thomas C. Peebles isolated measles virus from an 11-year-old boy, David Edmonston. Disappointed by polio vaccine’s development and involvement in some cases of polio and death – what Enders attributed to Salk’s technique – Enders began development of measles vaccine.

In 1946, Enders established a laboratory for research in infectious diseases at the Children’s Medical Center at Boston. In this laboratory much outstanding work on the viral diseases of man was done under his direction and it was here that the work was done on the cultivation of the poliomyelitis viruses.