UC San Diego Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine

Ronald W. McLawhon, M.D., Ph.D.
Director of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine
Director of Clinical Laboratories
Vice Chair for Business Development

Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine

Having opened in December 2011, the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM) is a 90,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility that will house a majority of the UC San Diego Health System’s Clinical Laboratories’ and the Department of Pathology’s diagnostic services. It will also serve as the new home for the Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine’s clinically-applied and translational research and development activities.

The CALM is the nexus and core laboratory facility of the Clinical Laboratories, as the Health System continues to expand its integrated delivery network throughout San Diego and North Counties. Centrally located at Campus Pointe, near the University’s main campus and less than one mile from the UC San Diego Medical Center-La Jolla, it is in close proximity to the John and Sally Thornton Hospital, the Moore’s Cancer Center and the new 10-story, $660 million Jacobs Medical Center (scheduled to open in 2016). It will also be the focus of a growing regionally- and nationally-recognized outreach/specialty referral program of the Department.

All major Laboratory and Genomic Medicine subspecialty disciplines are represented at the CALM, including: clinical chemistry, toxicology, drug analysis, pharmacogenomics, hematology and hematopathology, coagulation and hemostasis, diagnostic immunology and flow cytometry, immunogenetics and transplantation, clinical microbiology and virology, molecular microbiology, molecular diagnostics and molecular pathology, cytogenetics, genomics and personalized medicine, stem cell processing, and point-of-care testing.

This facility will also house the most advanced and state-of-the art technologies used in diagnostic medicine and pathology today (or are currently under development.). Among the tools available to CALM diagnosticians and investigators are: fully integrated, high throughput automation/robotics (pre-analytical, analytical, post-analytics; liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry; multiplexed real time PCR; conventional and next generation (including exome and whole genome)sequencing; array comparative genomic hybridization and other microarray technologies. The CALM is UC San Diego’s site for the development of diagnostic testing and therapeutic applications in the emerging fields of personalized medicine and genomics, clinical proteomics, and cell therapy. A full-scale biorepository and informatics center will also be available on-site to support both clinical and research activities and programs.

This is an exciting time for Laboratory and Genomic Medicine—and, a time for remarkable, unprecedented growth and development. With the CALM, UC San Diego and the Department of Pathology, will be poised to take a visionary leadership role and to be at the forefront of this new age for laboratory-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

Learn more about our laboratory at the URL below:
https://vimeo.com/user16212450/review/148645758/9f3b74f2b2

Click here for a map to the CALM.