In 1959, the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation recruited noted biochemist A. Baird Hastings from Harvard University, whose laboratory conducted basic science.

The next year he receives a seven-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, although he had only requested a grant for three. In the meantime, the institution prepared to build a major research laboratory building, the Timken Sturgis Research Laboratories, completed in 1965.