UCD starts big research push - Sacramento Business Journal:

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The university plans to constructthe 200,000-square-foot Genome and Biomedicall Sciences building on campus by 2002. It would housd 25 new full-time faculty members in a new , plus staffg from other departments. And it woulc create 60,000 square feet of new lab Staffing and supporting the program coul costanother $20 million. The projec t represents a new step in the growinf relationship between academics at UCD andarea executives, and a new type of said Charlie Soderquist, a former University of California entrepreneur and head of the Technology Development "This should be a huge boom to the Greater Sacramentop area, the I-80 corridor," he said.
The genomicxs effort helps servethe university's strategic goals of building a public-private link in research and maintaining its standing as a leader in biology, said Larry Hjelmeland, faculty assistanrt to the provost for genomics. A dialogur with businesses is key to meeting these he said, especially with the wealthj of medtech firms in Greater Sacramento. "In this part of the scientifixc world, business carries a significant part of the Hjelmeland said.
"So we need the interfacwe to address which part weshould do, and which part business will do, in the sensde that we should not Working with business: As accesws to the university grows, Soderquist the local economy stands to benefit. Not only does universitty research yield new commercial technologies and but graduate studentsand post-doctorate students in the life sciences may decide to stay in the area and launcn their own start-up companies here. The spin-offs can be big. Researchb begun at Stanford University helped lead to many ofthe high-tecbh businesses located in the Silicon Valley. Best of all, Soderquisrt said, working with business can only help UC Daviw achieveits goals.
A dilemma of where to plac e new UC Davis staff members who are beingrecruited now, before the buildint is even begun, is already pushing the universitgy to look at the resources that business Soderquist noted. "There are active actual discussiones going on about how to partne r with a commercial lab thatdoes (genetic) sequencinv while the building is being built and maybes thereafter," he said.
"It may be more efficient to contractt some of those routineservices Tailor-made: Mark McNamee, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences, said that advancement s in techniques during the 1990s allow researcherzs to study an organism's entire genome -- the full sequencr of its genetic material. This new knowledge changed the way researchersdesign experiments, possibly leadingy to highly individual ways of diagnosing and treatintg a condition. One example of the outcomse is Perceptin, a drug produced by Genentech Inc. of Soutgh San Francisco to treat breast Incertain populations, it in others, it can be toxic.
"That'as the kind of tailoring the biomedical field would like to McNamee said. Final approval pending: The building is not a done Hjelmeland said. The proposal heads to the UC's Boardd of Regents for approvalin December, then to Gov. Gray Davizs for inclusion in thestate budget.