Kenneth S. Warren Institute

The Kenneth S. Warren Institute is a U.S. non-profit biomedical research organization based in Durham, North Carolina. It is named after Kenneth Warren, a physician-scientist known for advancing research and policy on diseases.

History

Founding and early mission

The institute was incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation, and was chartered in 1980, under the name of the Drug and Vaccine Development Corporation. In response to a U.S. government mandate on the industrial sector to contribute more directly to improving public health in emerging nations, the DVDC espoused to pay particular attention to health problems affecting populations in the developing world. It sought to promote work in the fields of parasitology and tropical medicine.

Expansion in New York

In 2001, the institute bought a campus located in Westchester County, New York, from the Kitchawan Institute. The campus and surrounding nature preserve was the Kitchawan Research Station of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The director and lead researcher was Anthony Cerami. Funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for malaria research was granted to scholars at the institute. Collaborative work was also done with the Neuroscience Institute in Milan. Researchers at the Warren Institute looked at erythropoietin as a tissue-protective cytokine in brain injury. Eventually they developed non-erythropoietic small peptides for innate protection and repair of tissues from inflammation.

Institute relocation

The institute was moved from Westchester to the Research Triangle of North Carolina in 2014.