Paul Ehrlich Institute


The Paul Ehrlich Institute is a German research institution and medical regulatory body, and is the German federal institute for vaccines and biomedicines. It is a federal agency and subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Health. It is a WHO Collaborating Centre for quality assurance of blood products and in vitro diagnostic devices. The institute is located in Langen, Hesse, near Frankfurt, and was located in Frankfurt for most of the 20th century. It is named for its founding director, the immunologist and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Ehrlich.

History

The institute was founded on 1 June 1896 in Steglitz, Berlin as the Institute for Serum Research and Serum Testing, with Paul Ehrlich as its first director. The institute was founded specifically to provide a platform for Ehrlich's research. In 1899, it was moved to Frankfurt and renamed the Royal Institute for Experimental Therapy. After Germany became a republic in 1919, it was renamed the National Institute for Experimental Therapy. Ehrlich received numerous honours in Germany for his work on immunology and was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in medicine. In 1947, the institute was renamed the Paul Ehrlich Institute in honour of its founding director. In 1987, the institute moved from Paul-Ehrlich-Straße in Frankfurt to Langen, Hesse.

Activities

The regulatory tasks of the Paul Ehrlich Institute include the marketing authorisation of particular groups of medicinal products and the approval of clinical trials. The medicinal products in the responsibility of the PEI are: vaccines for humans and animals, medicinal products containing antibodies, allergens for therapy and diagnostics, blood and blood products and more recently, tissue and medicinal products for gene therapy, somatic cell therapy and xenogenic cell therapy.

Directors and Presidents