The article dwells on the setting up in 1890 of the first Russian research biomedical institution, the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine, in St. Petersburg. It offers a concise layout of the basic stages of the Institute development till 1917, during the first years of the Soviet State formation, and in the period when the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine was established on the basis of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. Much is devoted to the development of the Institute of Experimental Medicine within the system of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1945-1990) as well as to the prospects of modern physiological, biological, and medical research conducted in it.