The University of California, Irvine’s School of Biological Sciences has a new name after receiving a $50 million gift from biotech entrepreneur Charles Dunlop.
The gift renamed the school to be the Charles Dunlop School of Biological Sciences and will create an endowed fund to support faculty recruitment, retention for graduate students and the development of new programs.
“It gives us the ability to invest strategically in the programs that can help propel the School of Biological Sciences,” Dean Frank LaFerla told the Business Journal.
The gift was announced on Saturday, June 15 during the school’s commencement where Dunlop, founder of Aliso Viejo-based genetic testing firm Ambry Genetics, was the featured speaker.
It’s the largest donation the school has received to date, according to LaFerla.
Ambry Founder
Dunlop said that UCI is “a huge asset” to the local community.
“It would have been impossible to build a business like Ambry without UC Irvine and the higher education system in California, so for me to give back to the system that produced me and most of Ambry’s employees seems like the right thing to do,” Dunlop said in a statement.
Ambry was founded by Dunlop in 1999 with $500,000 raised from friends and family.
The company had humble beginnings in a small office above a Harley Davidson motorcycle shop in Costa Mesa and has since grown to a 65,000-square-foot laboratory with 380 employees in Orange County.
Ambry specializes in tests for a variety of conditions, including oncology, neurology and cardiology.
It became known for several innovations, such as the first DNA test called clinical exome, the first lab to offer full gene sequencing of the cystic fibrosis gene and multi-gene panels for intellectual disability and hereditary cancer.
In 2014, Dunlop won against competitor Myriad Genetics in a notable case, where it was ruled that genes couldn’t be patented.
Dunlop served as chairman and president of Ambry until he sold it to Tokyo-based Konica Minolta Inc. for $1 billion in 2017. That same year, he was named the Business Journal’s Businessperson of the Year in the healthcare space after selling his firm.
Last week, the Business Journal reported how Ambry Genetics and Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. are working together to find the genetic cause of rare diseases in pediatric patients.
The two were chosen by UCI and the Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases (GREGoR) Consortium to take part in a three-year research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
New Name
The renaming of the school has been in the works since November, according to LaFerla.
“The hardest thing we had to do was keep this a secret for several months,” he said.
LaFerla first met Dunlop around 2016 when Ambry opened its new lab across the street from its Aliso Viejo headquarters.
Dunlop had invited LaFerla, along with other deans from UCI, to attend the groundbreaking ceremony.
Following the interaction, LaFerla invited Dunlop to be the featured speaker at the school’s 2016 commencement.
“I really liked his enthusiasm for biology,” LaFerla said.
It was Dunlop’s idea to announce the $50 million gift during this year’s commencement, LaFerla said.
“Charlie’s vision was that he wanted to involve the students,” he said.
LaFerla noted Dunlop’s support of higher education, including his involvement as a member of the School of Biological Sciences Dean’s Leadership Council, which consists of alumni and industry leaders who support the school and help select the recipient of an annual scholarship.
An original division of UCI, the School of Biological Sciences is one of the largest schools within the university, according to LaFerla.
The 130 faculty members serve about 4,000 undergraduate and 300 graduate students.
Having an endowed fund will especially benefit graduate students by creating more research opportunities, LaFerla said.
“The most remarkable thing about this gift is that it’s pretty much unrestricted,” LaFerla said. “That money will be endowed, so every year, we will be able to live off of the interest.”
Surfing Nonprofit
Before Dunlop became a biotech entrepreneur, he was an avid surfer.
The Laguna Beach resident co-founded nonprofit Mauli Ola Foundation, combining his passion for curing genetic disorders and the ocean.
The nonprofit pairs kids with cystic fibrosis with professional surf instructors.
Dunlop read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about the healing properties of saline in people with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes mucus to build up in the lungs, digestive tract and other parts of the body.
The study found that inhaling ocean air helped break down congestion in the lungs, leading him to create the foundation.
