SAN DIEGO

The Scripps Research Institute is planning a major expansion at La Jolla, California, aiming to consolidate research facilities on one site and to take on more staff.

The proposal has provoked opposition from doctors working at the hospital that would be closed to clear the way for more laboratories. Research space at the site would increase by about 50 per cent under the plan being considered by the its parent board, the Scripps Institutions of Medicine and Science, which also operate six hospitals in the region.

If approved, the institute's expansion could enhance a burgeoning research community in the area — nearby are the Salk Institute; the University of California at San Diego (UCSD); the Burnham Institute (formerly La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation); the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center; and numerous biotechnology companies.

Richard Lerner, president of the institute, has said the plan will further his goal of making Scripps “the finest research institute in the world”.

The institute, which has an annual operating budget of $160 million, occupies about 500,000 square feet of laboratory space at the La Jolla site and leases about 250,000 square feet elsewhere. Scientists working at these off-site laboratories would be able to move to La Jolla if the research complex were expanded — a process that would take up to five years.

The plan is to close the 170-bed Green Hospital, adjacent to the institute, and combine it with the nearby, 321-bed Scripps Memorial Hospital, across the street from UCSD's new Thornton Hospital. The San Diego region has too many hospital beds and has experienced major cuts in health insurance companies' payments for care.

The proposal has prompted deep concern among the physicians at the renowned Scripps Clinic Medical Group, the 290-doctor team that provides care at the Green Hospital. The close-knit group fears that the new arrangement would detract from its method of treating patients. Dr. Thomas A. Waltz, a neurosurgeon who heads the group, says: “We do not have a knee-jerk reaction, saying: ‘No, no, never’. But there are a large number of issues that no one has begun to consider.”

But financial pressure is likely to force the move. It would allow the institute to add further to recent recruits, who include Paul Schimmel, a biochemist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Jeff Kelly, a chemist from Texas A&M; Jamie Williamson, a nuclear magnetic resonance specialist, also from MIT; and Williamson's wife Martha Fedor, a biologist from the University of Massachusetts.