The Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine will open its $127 million collaborative research building on Nov. 29, bringing together five major local biomedical research organizations to search for cures using stem cell science.
Set in La Jolla’s Torrey Pines Mesa area, the center will be in close proximity to the all of the collaborating institutes: The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Scripps Research Institute, UC San Diego and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology.
The 150,000 square-foot space, by San Diego-based Davis Davis Architects and Denver’s Fentress Architects, is laid out in a way that will foster unplanned “creative collisions” among researchers.
“The collaboratory was designed to be functional, flexible, innovative and wholly supportive of stem cell science,” said Louis R. Coffman, vice president and chief operating officer. The intent, he said, is to enable “an entirely new culture of scientific research.”
The center is funded in part with a $43 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a state agency created to disburse $3 billion from Proposition 71, the stem cell research ballot measure approved by state voters in 2004.
The project also received a $30 million donation from Sioux Falls, S.D., philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, for whom the consortium is named. He also serves as the consortium’s co-chair, along with local philanthropist Malin Burnham, Qualcomm Chairman and co-founder Irwin Mark Jacobs, and San Diego Padres Chairman John J. Moores, a former software executive.
