Dr. Coriell served in the army from 1943 through 1946.  There he met R.F. McNair Scott, Director of Research at Children's Hospital, who arranged for Coriell to finish his residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. While at CHOP, Coriell ran Tom Scott's research laboratory on herpes simplex virus and growing chicken pox virus in human tissue. John F. Enders of Harvard visited the lab and later tried the procedure on polio virus.  He, Frederick Robbins, and Thomas Waller later received a Nobel Prize for growing the polio virus!

In 1948, Reuben Sharp and Thack Read, president and secretary respectively of the Camden County Medical Society, were looking for a director for the Camden Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases.   Dr. Coriell was made director of the hospital, where residents from Children's Hospital, the Children's Hospital, Penn's Department of Medicine, and the Naval Hospital were exposed to treating contagious diseases.  Penn and the Camden County Medical Society each agreed to provide a consultant in every specialty to be on call.  Medical students came once a week for rounds. 

Patients at the Camden Municipal Hospital were treated for a wide variety of contagious diseases:

Following the success of the field trials and an article in the November 2, 1952 Saturday Evening Post, the community asked what they could do for Dr. Coriell. Since his patients were in Camden, his laboratory was at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, and the lab monkeys were housed at Garden State Race Track, he asked for a research laboratory.

In 1953, Jonas Salk began field trials of his vaccine, funded by the March of Dimes, in about 20 states. About ¼ to 1/3 of the blood samples were sent to the Camden Municipal Hospital, where Dr. Coriell's team was proficient in running the tests. Five companies agreed to produce the vaccine. Dr. Coriell and his colleague Dr. McAllister helped Wyeth, get started. They turned out to be the first company to receive FDA approval.

The South Jersey Medical Research Foundation was chartered by the State of New Jersey on November 3, 1953 and dedicated in June 1956. The name was later changed to the Institute for Medical Research. Developments that came from Dr. Coriell's Institute include: 

• Cell culture techniques
• HEPA filtered hoods for working in a sterile atmosphere
• Biohazard hoods, later adopted for hip surgery

Meet Our Founder (Coriell Institute for Medical Research)
Frozen for Life (Mapping New Territory in... New Jersey: The State of Research.  Union, NJ: New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research, 2001.)

Return to South Jersey Medical History.