LOS ANGELES, May 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Once home to the Weider Health and Fitness Center, created by body builder and entrepreneur Joe Weider, the newly-acquired addition to the Terasaki Institute will be custom-designed to house the latest technology in cutting-edge research. Built in 1971, the two-story building will provide 50,000 square feet of floor space for up to 200 employees.
Space devoted to laboratory research will be designed to accommodate multiple teams of scientists, who will be developing bioengineered systems, devices and other products with various biomedical applications. This new facility will be fully equipped to enable such technologies as tissue engineering and regeneration, bio-fabrication using 3D printing, nano- and micro-engineering, stem cell engineering and the creation of human organs on chips.
“I’m very excited about the addition of the new building to the Terasaki Institute. I believe that this addition will give us needed research space to bring together a number of leading scientists in our efforts to develop the next generation of biomedical innovations,” said Terasaki Institute’s new director and CEO, Ali Khademhosseini, PhD. “I’m particularly excited in furthering the great legacy of the Weider family and the building’s history in promoting health and fitness by focusing on individualized cures and diagnostics.”
In addition to the ample space and unique design features of the laboratory, the new facility will include in-house technology translation capabilities, to be able to build prototypes and scale models of devices engineered by the institute. It will also be able to accommodate meetings, seminars and conferences to further the education and exchange of ideas among our researchers and collaborators.
Stewart Han, President of Terasaki Institute, has been working hard to oversee the planning and renovation of the new building, and he is looking forward to great new opportunities for our institute as the building project takes shape. “It is exciting to be able to create a brand-new laboratory and research facility from the ground up, and it will greatly enhance our research capabilities when it’s completed,” he said. “We also know that the new building will facilitate future growth of our institute.”
“The board of the Terasaki Institute is very excited about the purchase of the new building in Woodland Hills, and we look forward to developing it into a world-class biomedical research center,” says board chair Keith Terasaki. “My father, the late Paul I. Terasaki, started the Terasaki Institute in hopes that it will make impactful discoveries in medical research. This new research facility will enable us to do so.”
Renovation of the building is set to begin in fall 2020, and is expected to take 18 to 24 months. It is the Terasaki Institute’s third research facility, and its completion is a much-anticipated event.
The Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (terasaki.org) is a non-profit research organization that invents and fosters practical solutions that restore or enhance the health of individuals. Research at the Terasaki Institute leverages scientific advancements that enable an understanding of what makes each person unique, from the macroscale of human tissues down to the microscale of genes, to create technological solutions for some of the most pressing medical problems of our time. We use innovative technology platforms to study human disease on the level of individual patients by incorporating advanced computational and tissue-engineering methods. Findings yielded by these studies are translated by our research teams into tailored diagnostic and therapeutic approaches encompassing personalized materials, cells and implants with unique potential and broad applicability to a variety of diseases, disorders and injuries.
The Institute is made possible through an endowment from the late Dr. Paul I. Terasaki, a pioneer in the field of organ transplant technology.
SOURCE Terasaki Institute
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