Pasteur Institute

The Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur, pronounced [ɛ̃stity pastœʁ]) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. The institute was founded on 4 June 1887 and inaugurated on 14 November 1888.

For over a century, the Institut Pasteur has researched infectious diseases. This worldwide biomedical research organization based in Paris was the first to isolate HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 1983. It has also been responsible for discoveries that have enabled medical science to control diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, influenza, yellow fever, and plague.

Since 1908, ten Institut Pasteur scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology—the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared between two Pasteur scientists.

The Institut Pasteur was founded in 1887 by the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. He was committed both to basic research and its practical applications. From the start, Pasteur brought together scientists with various specialties. The first five departments were directed by two normaliens (graduates of the École Normale Supérieure), Émile Duclaux (general microbiology research) and Charles Chamberland (microbes research applied to hygiene), a biologist, Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (morphological microbe research), and two physicians, Jacques-Joseph Grancher (rabies) and Emile Roux (technical microbe research). One year after the inauguration of the Institut Pasteur, Roux set up the first course of microbiology ever taught in the world, Cours de Microbie Technique (Course of microbe research techniques).

Pasteur's successors have sustained this tradition, which is reflected in the Institut Pasteur's unique history of accomplishment:

A new age of preventive medicine in France was made possible by the Institut Pasteur's (early 20th century) development of vaccines for tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, yellow fever and poliomyelitis. The discovery and use of sulfonamides in treating infections was another of its earlier breakthroughs. Some researchers discovered antitoxins, while Daniel Bovet received the 1957 Nobel Prize for his discoveries on synthetic anti-histamines and curarizing compounds.

Since World War II, Pasteur researchers have focused on molecular biology. Their achievements were recognized in 1965, when the Nobel Prize was shared by François Jacob, Jacques Monod and André Lwoff for their work on the regulation of viruses. In 1985, the first human vaccine obtained by genetic engineering from animal cells, the vaccine against hepatitis B, was developed by Pierre Tiollais and collaborators.

The center against rabies, directed by Jacques-Joseph Grancher and Émile Roux, had become so overcrowded that it became necessary to build a structure that Pasteur had been using the name "Institute Pasteur" long before it was even built. Pasteur delegated the task of the project and of creating the new building, situated on rue Dutot, to two of his colleagues, Grancher and Emile Duclaux.