The Institute of Parasitology and Tropical Diseases of Strasbourg (IPPTS) aims at studying and teaching the fungal and tropical parasitic diseases.

The teaching of parasitology started in the second empire with Louis Engel followed by Hermann Wasserfuhr who led major investigations on malaria in Alsace in 1878, in collaboration with a famous entomologist, Frizt Eckstein, the latter having been killed in the institute during the Second World War.

Jacques Callot who participated in the resistance movement in France, chief in parasitology and dean of the faculty of medicine after 1945, founded the institute under its current name in 1961.

The Institute was then headed by Prof. Michel Krémer who developed internationally renowned  entomological studies and founded a unique entomological reference collection of Culicoides.

Professor Truong Thai Kien succeeded him and developed the study of parasite immunology and of Toxoplasma gondii.

The past has forged some of the current topics of the Institute such as the taxonomy of Culicoides or the physiopathology of Toxoplasmosis.

The Professor Ermanno Candolfi, specialist of Toxoplasmosis, leads currently the IPPTS.

Its staff is a mixed teaching hospital staff originating from French, German, Romanian or African universities.

The staff contributes to the hospital activity of the Laboratory of Parasitology and Medical Mycology at the University Hospital of Strasbourg (LPMM).

This laboratory hosts every year 10 medical biology residents who are trained in the LPMM as well as specialist interns and many European, African or South American students, trained to conduct research in the « Dynamics of Host Pathogen Interaction » team, renowned by the French evaluation agency f research and teaching (AERES). The Institute of Parasitology and Tropical Diseases of Strasbourg (IPPTS) also hosts the associated laboratory "Serology pole" of the National Reference Center for Toxoplasmosis of the French Health Monitoring Institute (INVS) and collaborates with a range of French, European, South and North American and African universities.

Since 1961, the Institute members have published more than 300 national and international scientific publications.