UC San Diego blueprints $110M R&D collaboration complex

In yet another ambitious effort to pilot academic drug research into the hands of biotech execs, the University of California in San Diego is readying a $110 million research complex designed to bring the two worlds closer together.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that its Board of Regents is expected to endorse construction of the Center for Innovative Therapeutics, where university investigators can collaborate with drug developers.

"The campus has evaluated options for providing research space that would increase collaboration among private companies and university researchers and clinicians and concluded that construction of a new facility is the optimal solution," says Thomas Kipps, the interim director of UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center in La Jolla, in a Q&A with the Union-Tribune. "With rapid growth in faculty and sponsored research activity that seeks to transform laboratory discoveries into effective treatment for patients, increased interaction with private companies is critical."

Kipps says he's collected two dozen letters of interest in the new facility from "startup companies, entrepreneurs and venture capital support companies." Once built, the complex is expected to bring together investigators from a variety of disciplines, a popular feature these days in the preclinical drug discovery world. 

- here's the story from the Union-Tribune