The Pasteur Institute of Iran (PII) was founded in Tehran, Iran in 1921 under the incentive of Firouz Nosrat-ed-Dowleh III, then minister of Foreign Affairs, and with the help of a land donation from his father Abdol-Hossein Farmanfarma. Its mission is to support advanced research and to provide innovative programs in basic and applied medical sciences, and production of biopharmaceuticals and diagnostic kits with special emphasis on infectious diseases. It meets the specialized and scientific health demands of the local community and tries to establish a link between applied research and industry. Pasteur Institute is a leading regional facility in the development and manufacture of vaccines.
The institute has a total staff of 1300 in its 28 departments and 5 branches in different cities of Iran, which are active in different areas of medical and pharmaceutical biotechnology. There are about 50 PhDs and 200 M.Sc graduates. It produces 3.5 billion doses of different vaccines.
In 1952 during a plague epidemic in western area of Iran, Pasteur Institute of Iran founded a health research center in Akanlu, a village located between Zanjan, Kurdistan and Hamadan. As a result of the foundation of this center, the various teams of Pasteur Institute of Iran were able to deal with the control of the plague endemic in there via taken effective strategies. This research center is now called the Research Center for Emerging and Re emerging Infection Diseases. In it, Dr. Marcel Baltazard et al. conducted extensive research on plague and the Akanlu research center established itself as an international reference institution for plague. Since 2013 and in the period of renovation of this the center, the old buildings were renovated and laboratories and new buildings were completed. As of 2015, this center is the national reference center for plague, tularemia and Q fever and has conducted several studies on emerging and reemerging diseases.
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Coordinates: 35°41′29″N 51°23′45″E / 35.6915°N 51.3958°E