The first course of rabies treatment was administered under the supervision of Louis Pasture, more than a century ago. Since then, rabies vaccines have always been among the first to benefit from progress in production and control. As regards vaccines for human use , around 1955 there was a transition from vaccines prepared from animal nerve tissue to embrocated eggs and very soon afterwards, around 1960, to adaption of rabies virus to cultures of human diploid cells . The development of this vaccine, which remains the reference vaccine in comparative studies of immunogenicity, took long years. It was first registered In France in 1974 and a little later in North America. The late 1970s and the 1980s saw the development of a plethora of vaccines prepared on various cellular substrates such as primary explaint cells of hampster, dog or fetal calf kidney, fibroblasts of chicken embryo, or diploid cells from rhesus monkey fetal lung, and finally cells from continuous lines (Vero cells). The production of some of these vaccines was stopped at the end of the 1980s whilst others have been administered to millions of patients. An inactivated rabies vaccine for human use was first prepared in cell culture in 1964. In 1966 it was shown that the human diploid cell (HDC) strain WI-38 was a suitable substrate for the propagation of the Pitman-Moore (PM) strain of fixed rabies virus. The original procedure for the production of this vaccine was described in the third edition. Since 1967, research and development have been carried out on this vaccine at the Meraux Institute. The vaccine was first licensed for use in France in 1974 and commercial production started in 1978.
http://www.who.int/rabies/vaccines/human_vaccines/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/rabies/vaccines/human_vaccines/en/index.html