UCI Gets $5-Million Gift for Research

A Corona del Mar couple have given $5 million to UC Irvine to help build the second major facility in the College of Medicine’s biomedical research center.

The gift from the Robert and Margaret Sprague Family Foundation will fund construction of laboratories, classrooms and offices for research dedicated to finding genetic links to the causes of cancer.

Sprague, whose father was a physician and a UC regent, was an investment banker and director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. The Sprague donation and a $5-million gift from the Donald Bren Foundation to fund molecular medical research were the largest contributions to the university in 1998. Bren is chairman of landowner and developer Irvine Co.

University officials applauded the couple’s generosity. The Spragues will receive the 1999 UCI Medal, the university’s highest honor, at a ceremony in February.

Previously, the Spragues had given UCI $2.1 million, including funds for the Oaks Fall Classic equestrian event, the University Arboretum and the Brain Imaging Center, which focuses research on schizophrenia, depression, and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

The record for total giving to the school belongs to Arnold and Mabel Beckman, who have donated $15.8 million, most of it to the College of Medicine. The Beckman Laser Institute was named after them.

The new cancer research building, to be completed in three to four years on the western edge of the campus as part of the medical school complex, will be named the Robert R. Sprague Family Foundation Hall.

The hall also will house California’s only Cancer Genetics Network Center, which was set up at UCI by the National Cancer Institute last summer and is one of eight such centers nationwide.

The Spragues became familiar with the College of Medicine when Margaret Sprague attended a seminar sponsored by the Brain Imaging Center, said officials. That led to the couple’s first donation to the medical school a year ago to support work at the center.