Groundbreaking for the IGI – Bakar Labs Building Marks the Start of New Era of Genomic Innovation at UC Berkeley

Today, with the scoop of a shovel, Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) founder Jennifer Doudna marked a new chapter for the institute and UC Berkeley. Known for her groundbreaking, Nobel Prize-winning work developing CRISPR genome editing, Doudna broke ground in a whole new way: kicking off construction of the new Innovative Genomics Institute – Bakar Labs Building. The vision for the building, designed to be shared by the IGI and Bakar Labs, is to create a world-class hub where scientific discovery, entrepreneurship, and innovation can thrive together. 

The building site, across from the west entrance to the UC Berkeley cCampus, sits adjacent to the Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials building, also under construction. When complete, the new buildings will occupy a prominent spot in the Berkeley Innovation Zone, a corridor that connects the university campus with downtown Berkeley.

Today’s groundbreaking was an important milestone in the collaboration between the IGI, Bakar Labs, philanthropic supporters, UC Berkeley administrators, and the team who will make the vision come to life: the architects Weiss/Manfredi and DGA, engineers, consultants, and construction partners.

“This shared building provides an exciting opportunity to deepen the longtime partnership between the IGI and Bakar Labs,” said Bakar Labs Director David Schaffer, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “As some of our larger startups mature, including IGI spinouts, IGI-Bakar Labs will provide them additional space to expand within the UC Berkeley ecosystem before moving into private industrial facilities off-campus. We’re also excited to synergize IGI’s growing agricultural research with the Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials incubator, which opens its doors in 2028, right next door.”

Accelerating innovative science

When Jennifer Doudna and Jonathan Weissman launched the IGI in 2015 to develop CRISPR genome-editing solutions to health problems that would not be addressed by the for-profit sector, it comprised a few labs scattered across different buildings at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. The rapid growth of CRISPR technology and the broadening of the institute’s scope into agriculture and the environment led to a move into the current IGI headquarters on Berkeley Way. Since then, the growth in the genome-engineering space has only accelerated as the early promise of CRISPR has turned into real-world solutions.

Since its founding, the IGI’s vision has been to translate innovations in the lab into accessible solutions to some of society’s largest problems. Supporting entrepreneurship has been one of the key avenues for getting promising technologies to the public quickly. Providing scientists-turned-entrepreneurs with the resources they need to launch those innovations into thriving companies is the guiding vision driving Bakar Labs.

Each year, the IGI contributes roughly 15 percent of the new inventions filed by UC Berkeley, and has spun out over 30 companies. Bakar Labs, which runs incubators for both life science and planetary health startups developing innovative technologies to benefit society, launched by UC Berkeley and QB3, has served as an important partner for growing several IGI spinout companies.

Azalea Therapeutics, co-founded by Doudna, and Regel Therapeutics are both examples of IGI spinouts that called Bakar Labs home. Now, sharing a dedicated space for the first time, the IGI’s researchers and Bakar Labs companies will have new opportunities to build fruitful collaborations.

In recent years, the IGI expanded into the new field of microbiome editing with a $70 million gift through the Audacious Project at TED to support research into mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from livestock with partner campus UC Davis, and to develop new interventions for diseases including childhood asthma that are impacted by our microbiomes. The IGI was also a key part of the team that developed a personalized on-demand therapy for a newborn with a rare genetic disease, and is expanding the work on rare disease cures with the Center for Pediatric CRISPR Cures. All of this growth has meant more researchers and more demands on lab space. And at the same time, the way science is done has also transformed.

“Across all of our work, AI and automation are accelerating our research and allowing us to grow in whole new directions,” said Doudna at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This has meant rethinking what labs look like, embedding robotics into more and more experiments, and in real time changing the types of spaces and people we need in this new era of scientific research.”

IGI Executive Director Brad Ringeisen’s vision for the IGI – Bakar Labs Building is to expand the scope of CRISPR-based therapy research to more diseases and enhance the microbiome editing work to precisely tune and regulate microbiome for both health and climate applications, research that requires a uniquely interdisciplinary team.

“This new building, purpose-built for the type of collaborative team science we do at the Innovative Genomics Institute will allow us to accelerate our research in both health and agriculture, and most importantly, increase our impact on real-world problems,” said Ringeisen.

Construction is projected to last until late 2028, following the opening of the neighboring Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials building.

Read the original press release at: https://innovativegenomics.org/news/igi-bakar-labs-building-groundbreaking/