Four of the world's top research groups have broken ground on a new, $115 million "collaboratory" designed to inspire new work on stem cells. The facility, which should be finished in late 2011, will bring together scientists from Scripps Research Institute, Sanford-Burnham Research Institute, UC San Diego and the Salk Institute.
"By bringing together our top engineers and scientists, mathematicians, computational scientists and physicians, we know the research at this facility will achieve great breakthroughs," said UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. T. Denny Sanford contributed $30 million and his name to the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which is also being financed with money from the state's stem cell initiative.
Like a number of new research facilities, backers hope that mixing researchers from various fields and institutions will help inspire new thinking. And in San Diego, which already has a thriving biotech community, backers are also hoping that others will gravitate to the area to gain closer proximity to the work underway inside the new research complex.
"It's going to be a magnet for other research groups and development companies eventually," Greg Bisconti, senior director with Cushman & Wakefield's Global Life Sciences Practice Group, tells the San Diego Business Journal. "They're going to want to be close to this center."
- read the story from the San Diego Union-Tribune
- here's the piece from the San Diego Business Journal