NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LIAI) has joined the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, a multi-institutional collaboration based in a new facility in San Diego that is set to open in November and will focus on stem cell research.
LIAI will be the fifth partner institution to join the non-profit consortium, joining the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Scripps Research Institute, the University of California, San Diego, and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute.
The consortium was formed in 2006 between those four initial partners with the aim of expanding collaborative work in stem cell research and translating that science into clinical cures. The collaboration took its name from Denny Sanford, who donated $30 million to the project. The consortium also has received a $43 million major facilities grant award from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine.
"The foundation of the Sanford Consortium is to establish a 'collaboratory' that brings together investigators with different expertise to exploit stem cells to improve human health," Edward Holmes, the consortium's president and CEO, said in a statement. "The addition of a body of investigators with expertise in immunology will expand the consortium's breadth of science in a number of important ways," Holmes said.
LIAI President and CSO Mitchell Kronenberg will become a member of the Sanford Consortium's 10-member board of directors.