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Couple Pledge $10 Million for UCSD Research

UC SAN DIEGO HEALTH SCIENCES

Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences: Dr. David A. Brenner.

Annual budget: $1.78 billion. Research funding amounted to $597.4 million in 2010.

No. of employees: 9,300.

Headquarters: La Jolla.

Year founded: The school of medicine was founded in 1968.

Mission of organization: UC San Diego Health Sciences takes in schools of medicine and pharmacy as well as the UCSD Health System and the UCSD Medical Group. Its mission is to provide excellent and compassionate patient care, advance medical discoveries and educate future health care professionals.

Qualcomm Inc. President Steve Altman and his wife, Lisa Altman, have pledged $10 million to UC San Diego. Their gift will fund a lab building created for taking basic medical research and converting it into cures for diseases.

The pledge, announced March 3, had roots in the Altmans’ personal experience with type 1 diabetes, which has affected their son as well as Steve Altman’s father, brother and niece.

The gift, however, will support a much wider swath of research, taking in fields as diverse as conventional “wet lab” biology and telecommunications-based medical devices.

The Altmans’ name will go on the $269 million, 311,000-square-foot Clinical and Translational Research Institute building planned for the eastern portion of the UCSD campus and scheduled to open in late 2016.

Personal Understanding

“We know how difficult it is to see a disease change the life of one’s own child,” Steve Altman said in a statement issued by UCSD, “and we are pleased that we can play a small role in helping UC San Diego bring together the resources needed to help cure type 1 diabetes and so many other diseases that impact our community and the world.”

“Our teenage daughter tested positive for certain antibodies, so we have also been living for years with the realization that she is likely to contract the disease,” Lisa Altman said. The Altmans made their comments via a UCSD spokeswoman.

UCSD plans to break ground on the building in 2012. As planned, some 189,000 square feet of the building’s 311,000-square-foot total will be available for assignment.

Among other things, the building will offer space for human subject research, including research that involves overnight stays. Right now, such research is scattered on the UCSD main campus west of Interstate 5, in leased space on Torrey Pines Mesa and at UCSD’s hospital complex in Hillcrest, said Dr. Gary Firestein, director of UCSD’s Clinical and Translational Research Institute.

The new building will offer an “attractive environment” for researchers who would like to move their projects, Firestein said.

Firestein said building plans call for wet labs and dry labs. Those terms refer, respectively, to space suitable for classic biological experiments and space optimized for computer-related research.

UCSD officials envision researchers from a variety of fields working side by side in the building, taking multidisciplinary looks at problems and creating a unique sort of energy, Firestein said.

Some $37.2 million in federal funding will go toward the building. The National Center for Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health, made the commitment in 2010 to provide the funding over five years, Firestein said. The university expects research grants to pay for the balance of the debt on the building, Firestein said. Such grants typically provide for indirect costs, such as electricity, water and facilities, he said.

A Need for Private Support

With state funds growing short, UCSD has an increased need for private donations, the university said in a statement.

The University of California’s board of Regents approved financing for the building project in November. It has yet to approve actual building plans. The university selected Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP to design the building. The Portland, Ore., firm designed the Moores Cancer Center, located nearby on UCSD’s east campus.

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