san diego

The University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has begun developing a new life-sciences research campus at a cost of up to $1.5 billion.

The University of California Board of Regents last week approved the first building of the new Mission Bay campus. The $222 million complex will house centres for structural and chemical biology and for molecular and cell biology.

Plans for a second building, with laboratories for genetics, developmental biology and neurobiology, at a cost of about $100 million, are near completion. These plans are expected to be approved soon.

The Mission Bay campus is designed to replace much of the present UCSF research facilities adjacent to its medical centre at the Parnassus Heights campus, where buildings have been damaged by earthquakes, laboratory space is at a premium, and expansion is limited by residents' objections.

The 43-acre Mission Bay campus, to be built on the site of a former railway yard and warehouse district in the south-eastern part of the city, will be ringed by private development of biotechnology and related firms that hope to capitalize on the new research complex.

The project is being compared by its supporters to the Stanford Industrial Park, which formed the nucleus of Silicon Valley near Stanford University.

“This represents a dramatic opportunity for our campus,” said Zach Hall, a neuroscientist who is UCSF's vice-chancellor for research. “Most of our existing basic research faculty will move to the new campus and there will be a significant number of new faculty and associates in the future.”

Hall could not specify how many new research positions will be created, but said that as lab space grows, so too will staff and educational opportunities. The first building will have laboratories for about 50 principal investigators and will eventually house 900 personnel. When completed, the Mission Bay campus will provide work space for about 9,000 scientists, graduate students and staff in 20 buildings.

Current plans call for focusing on basic research at the Mission Bay campus, with disease-related research efforts remaining at the Parnassus Heights campus near the UCSF medical centre.

The cost of the first building on the Mission Bay campus is being met by $110 million in gifts, $70 million in bonds, $21 million in state funds, and $18 million in lease payments from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which will occupy part of the building.