Four of San Diego’s biggest research institutions are teaming up to build the nation’s first stem cell center - the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine,” in La Jolla.
The $115 million building would be built by the University of California San Diego, Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute and the Burnham Institute for Medical Research by 2010.
“We have this vision of getting people with common interests in the same place so you get a synergy that enhances everyone’s individual capacity and makes things go faster,” Larry Goldstein, a Howard Hughes Institute stem cell researcher at the University of California San Diego told the newspaper Sign on San Diego.

The facility would be located on more than 7 acres owned by the University of California at San Diego in the Torrey Pines area biotechnology cluster. In 2004, California approved a measure creating a $3 billion stem cell research agency.

Embryonic stem cells are stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of an early stage embryo known as a blastocyst. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4-5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50-150 cells.