In 1991, the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation gave up its direct affiliation with Scripps Clinic to become an independent corporation known as The Scripps Research Institute.

Today, the Scripps Research Institute is one of the largest, private, non-profit scientific research organizations in the world. It stands at the forefront of basic biomedical science, a vital segment of medical research that seeks to comprehend the most fundamental processes of life. In a little more than four decades, it has made many major contributions leading to the betterment of health and the human condition.

In 1961, a group of five young immunologists led by Frank Dixon moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to La Jolla, California to start the Department of Experimental Pathology at what was then called the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation (SCRF). The SCRF had been formed a few years earlier from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic, which was established in 1924 with a gift from local philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps.