S.F. Hospital Plans to Build AIDS Lab

The chief of medicine at San Francisco General Hospital has announced plans for a $12-million AIDS research laboratory that he hopes will draw the nation’s top experts in fighting the disease.

Dr. Merle Sande said he expects to raise about $5 million a year in private and federal research grants for the 27,000-square-foot facility. “You bring together brilliant scientists and it’s like getting a bunch of bees in a beehive. They facilitate each others’ discoveries,” he said.

A state legislative committee approved about $10.5 million last week to build the laboratory as part of $87 million in proposed spending to combat acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The funds still have to be approved by the full Legislature and the governor.

The proposed center would be built above the hospital’s pathology lab and run by the University of California, San Francisco. It has received $1.5 million in state start-up funds.

Sande said the proposed laboratory would conduct basic research into the AIDS virus and the human cells with which it interacts to help in the search for a vaccine.