SAN DIEGO — Scripps Research in La Jolla is celebrating a century of transforming human health. The nonprofit biomedical institute is ranked No. 1 in the world when it comes to innovation.
With 100 years of life-changing science at Scripps, they have saved countless lives.
"It started 100 years ago through philanthropy — it continues that way now," said Dr. Gabriel Ozorowski, who is a Senior Laboratory Director.
Operations Manager Hannah Turner added, "Our lab works on a lot of different projects."
Scripps Research is home to six Nobel Prizes, 15 FDA approved medications and more than a thousand patents. Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are right here.
"We focus primarily on vaccine development for HIV, the Flu, Malaria," Turner said.
"It's marginal steps in science, but it's a global team effort – and it's a great feeling knowing I'm contributing something to the team effort," Dr. Ozorowski said.
These two top scientists very humbly invited CBS 8 inside their lab.
"Ten years ago, it took a week to collect the data and three months to get a high resolution structure — now it takes less than an hour to go from collection to a high resolution structure. It's just exponentially growing," Turner said.
Celebrating their centennial milestone, Scripps has studied everything from cancer research, to heart disease, to arthritis, and helped develop vaccines against infectious diseases.
"One thing I'm really proud of, is we were working with the COVID virus before the pandemic even hit, and we developed a little tweak in the protein that allowed it to be more stable and that little tweak went into all of the vaccines that are out. It's cool to be directly part of something like that," Turner said.
100 years ago, it was Ellen Browning Scripps who shared the same big goals. The philanthropist and journalist had an interest in diabetes, and after the discovery of insulin, opened the Institute in 1924 to see how else science could change medicine.
"The research they're doing is providing that foundation to make medicines for some of the most devastating diseases, like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and more — we have it covered at Scripps," said Lauren Fish, who is the Senior Manager of Scientific Communications and Marketing at Scripps Research.
Remaining a nonprofit has allowed Scripps to do more curiosity-driven research. The majority of their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other generous donors.
"Donations are always welcome, and we'll take it and do good stuff with it," Turner said.
As Scripps Research enters a new century, they say they will continue to pursue bold and transformative ideas that advance human health and ultimately save lives.
Scripps Research also takes in high school interns and trains the next generation of leading scientists. It is consistently named among the top 10 programs for chemistry and biological sciences.
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