SARANAC LAKE, N.Y. -- "Right now we're in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York just outside the Village of Saranac Lake, the Trudeau Institute is a not-for-profit biomedical research institute, it focuses on understanding basic community to various infections. The mission of the Institute is to improve human health through basic research, and so the scientists that work here study a number of different diseases and how the body fights those diseases. The research that goes on at the Trudeau Institute is known worldwide, we're one of the leaders in infectious disease research,” said director Dr. David Woodland.

“The Institute was founded by Edward Livingston Trudeau, who moved up here in the mid-1800s, he had tuberculosis and actually really came up to this area to cure himself, which he did. He was an M.D. and went on to establish a sanitorium here that treated other people with tuberculosis, a very successful sanitorium, but he was also interested in medical research and started to research on tuberculosis, and he read a paper in that was published in 1882 by Koch (German scientist) that said that tuberculosis was caused by a bacterium, and so Dr. Trudeau began doing research on this, and in fact, was one of the very first people in the United States to do real research on tuberculosis as a bacteria. His original laboratory was in the center of Saranac Lake and actually burnt down while he was still working there, and another laboratory was built which still stands today,” Woodland continued.

“We are currently building a new research wing, which is the Stafford Research Wing and that will allow us to, that provides us with more research space, and then the next phase which I was really refering to, will occur over the next five to ten years, we would like to increase the size of the Institute by another 50 percent, “ the doctor said..
“We're extremely proud of the fact that we've been here for 125 years, it speaks tremendously well to the work that goes on here. I think if Edward Livingston Trudeau were to come back and look at the Institute now and think about how his laboratory started, that he would be extremely proud of what we're doing, and I think it's a great legacy that this organization exists today and that it was all based on what he started,” said Woodland.