The Sisters of Charity, who founded St Vincent's Hospital in 1857, used funds raised from their Centenary Appeal to establish the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. It began its existence as a small research department of St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. Today, the Institute remains a member of the St Vincent's and Mater Health Campus and is affiliated with the University of New South Wales.

Mrs Helen Mills was one of the primary donors to the Centenary appeal, giving 100 000 pounds. She requested that the Institute be named after her late father James Patrick Garvan (1843-1896), a distinguished NSW parliamentarian and business leader.

In 1984 the New South Wales Parliament passed the Garvan Institute of Medical Research Act, incorporating Garvan as an autonomous, non-profit research institute.

In 1986, after an international review, Garvan was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Block Grant. Only six medical research institutions were granted this funding status in Australia and Garvan was the sole NSW recipient.

NHMRC funding and increased public financial support through the newly-established Garvan Research Foundation, allowed Garvan to increase dramatically in size throughout the 1990s.

The Institute was granted a large infrastructure grant by the NSW Government in 1994, and used this funding to build the world-class research facility, which was completed in 1997.

Since then, Garvan has grown to become one of Australia's largest autonomous medical research institutions with over four hundred scientists, students and support staff. Garvan enjoys major collaborative programs with national and international institutions and places emphasis on establishing links with hospitals and industry.

The critical mass of leading senior scientists at Garvan ensures that the quality of the research output of Garvan is amongst the best in the world. Garvan receives funding from a range of prestigious and highly competitive Australian and overseas sources such as the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Cancer Institute NSW, Diabetes Australia, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

Garvan is internationally recognised as a leader in gene-based medical research and is committed to delivering new insights into major diseases and novel ways to prevent and treat these disorders.