Pasteur Institute

The Pasteur Institute, also known as the Institut Pasteur, is a nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to the study, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases.

Established by Dr. Louis Pasteur in June 1887, the Institute opened in November 1888 in a single building in a southwest suburb of Paris. Pasteur had become famous in the 1860s for his revolutionary work on germ theory and pasteurization, the process of heating foods to kill harmful bacteria and contaminants. Later, he moved into a long-term study of immunology and had developed several important vaccination protocols for animals and humans. In the 1880s, he was working on a vaccine for rabies when he decided to open an institute where scientists could come together to learn and teach.

Pasteur gathered five prominent researchers to work with him at his Institute: Emile Duclaux, Charles Chamberland, Ilya Illyich Mechnikov, Joseph Grancher, and Emile Roux. All specialized in various aspects of microbes, and in 1889, Emile Roux taught his Cours de Microbie Technique, the first-ever academic course in the new field of microbiology.

It was just the first in a staggering array of innovations and discoveries that came out of the Pasteur Institute in the coming decades. They solved many long-standing mysteries about the human immune system and how it interacted with the microbial world. Researchers isolated and studied the structure of diseases that were long the scourge of humankind and created vaccines to treat such killers as tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, yellow fever, and hepatitis B. “Pasteurians,” as they were called, carried new research methods and techniques around the world.

Today, the Pasteur Institute is one of the largest medical research organizations in the world and is almost unparalleled in its work on immunology, microbiology, and molecular biology. It maintains a global network of 29 affiliated institutes on five continents.

The Paris campus, with 2,700 scientists and employees, is divided into 10 major research departments: Cell Biology and Infection, Developmental Biology, Genomes and Genetics, Immunology, Infection and Epidemiology, Microbiology, Neuroscience, Parasitology and Mycology, Structural Biology and Chemistry, and Virology.

Every year, about 250 medical students and postgraduates from around the world come to the Pasteur Institute for advanced training in immunology and microbiology, and another 800 trainees come to perfect their laboratory skills.

In 2005, the operating budget for the Institute was 205.5 million. To maintain its autonomy and objectivity, it derives its funding from several sources, including government subsidies, licensing fees, investments, and private donations.

It also produces and distributes diagnostic tests through a branch of the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi. Over the past several years, it has also provided start-up funding for 14 biotechnology companies whose work might complement that of the Institute.