The Broad Foundation Donates $25 Million to UCSF Stem Cell Program
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The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is donating $25 million to UCSF’s stem cell program, one of the largest and most comprehensive programs of its kind in the United States.
The funds will be put toward the construction of a headquarters for the program, which will enable scientists to continue their advances in identifying strategies to treat a wide range of diseases, UCSF has announced.
The building is designed to enhance scientists’ efforts to develop novel treatments for such diseases as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease, HIV/AIDS and cancer.
In recognition of the gift, the Institute for Regeneration Medicine at UCSF will be renamed the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.
“Scientists have made significant headway in understanding the basic biology of stem cells in recent years, and UCSF scientists have been at the forefront of these efforts,” said Eli Broad, founder of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
“The UCSF center’s headquarters will be a world-class facility that will enable scientists to accelerate their research, by bringing some of the world’s leading stem cell scientists together under one roof and providing them with a setting that promotes collaboration and an exchange of ideas, both key to making clinical advances to improve human health.”
“Eli and Edythe Broad have shown extraordinary generosity and vision with this gift,” said UCSF Chancellor Bishop. “Discoveries in the medical sciences result from rigorous inquiry, creative thinking and, sometimes, serendipity. They also result from the proximity of scientists working on similar problems from different angles. Nowhere is this more true than in the stem cell field. The Broad’s gift will directly advance this effort.”
The $123-million building, which will be located on the UCSF Parnassus Campus, will bring together 25 labs involved in various areas of human and animal embryonic and adult stem cell and related early-cell studies. It will serve as the core of a research program that will continue to extend throughout UCSF, encompassing 125 labs exploring the earliest stages of animal and human development, mechanisms of organ repair, immune rejection, biomaterials, and cancer, with an eye toward clinical therapies.