Silicon Valley network, and the case of UCSF

Silicon Valley is impressive, in part because of how the personal efforts of thousands of individuals here can create so much. Here’s our story (free registration) about how private donors joined public ones raised $1.6 billion over seven years to help build out life science and research facilities at the University of California San Francisco. Many of the leaders were Silicon Valley execs and investors, and we talked with one of them, Brook Byers, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The news comes at the same time that another local company Genentech, confirms how important life science research is. Here’s the separate story on the “stunning” advance the company has made in a drug to combat breast cancer. We should not that drug, Herceptin, was partly developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, another campus in the UC system. Anyway, noteworthy examples of good cooperation between private and public sectors.