L.A.’s bioscience research scene is likely to be completely transformed over the next few years as a major immunology research institute tied to UCLA opens in the city’s Westside.
The $1 billion-plus California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy – announced just over a year ago – is slowly taking shape at the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall in Westwood. The institute, along with the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, will comprise the 700,000-square-foot UCLA Research Park West.
Move-in starting next year?
According to information supplied by the board of the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, the initial phase of the institute will consist of up to 120,000 square feet of research space and up to 40,000 square feet for a biotech startup incubator.
When fully built and operational, the institute will take up at least 360,000 square feet, just over half of the research campus. It is also expected to employ about 5,000 people, including about 500 bioscience researchers.
“This new Center for Immunology and Immunotherapy is really going to change medicine and make Los Angeles really the hub of research from people from all over the world who are the best scientists in their fields,” Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health, chief executive of the UCLA Hospital System and associate vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences, said in a podcast interview with the Business Journal and PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
“Through this institute, we really hope to bring forward for our community – and actually the world – better treatments and faster cures,” Spisso added.
According to the board, the first researchers and businesses could move in by mid-to-late next year, about nine months later than forecast last summer. The board is in the midst of recruiting executives and staff to run the institute.
This pace is unaffected by the recent designation of a part of the former Westside Pavilion structure as a one-stop shop for Palisades Fire victims seeking government and other forms of assistance. A spokesman for the institute confirmed that activity is taking place in a wing of the facility that’s completely separate from the institute space.
State funding and billionaire backing
So far, the state has allocated $200 million to the development of the institute, with the intent to provide another $500 million. Private donation commitments have totaled $250 million to date, primarily from the six-member board.
Billionaire medical device inventor and philanthropist Gary Michelson, who leads the board, has committed $100 million toward the institute. A similar amount has been committed from billionaire biotech entrepreneur Arie Belldegrun. The other board members – UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine faculty member Eric Esrailian; UCLA benefactor Meyer Luskin, who made his fortune in industry and real estate; billionaire and early Facebook investor Sean Parker; and billionaire financier-turned philanthropist Michael Milken – have each contributed millions of their own dollars.
Speaking to the institute’s role in medical research, Michelson said that recent advances in immunology – specifically related to using the body’s cells to fight cancer – have “opened the floodgates to opportunities to apply immunological research to treat – and even prevent – cardiovascular disease, allergies, neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, dyslexia and autism, as well as autoimmune diseases like diabetes, ALS, muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma and multiple sclerosis.”
Both Michelson and Spisso said that anticipated advances in computing at the adjacent UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering should make more artificial intelligence algorithms available to researchers at the institute, which in turn could speed the development of new immunotherapies.
