The Jackson Laboratory (often abbreviated as JAX) is an independent, non-profit

biomedical research Medical research (or biomedical research), also known as experimental medicine, encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called ''bench science'' or ''bench research''), – involving fundamental scientif ...

institution which was founded by a

eugenicist Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

. It employs more than 3,000 employees in

Bar Harbor, Maine Bar Harbor is a resort town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population is 5,089. During the summer and fall seasons, it is a popular tourist destination and, until a catastrophic fire i ...

;

Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...

;

Farmington, Connecticut Farmington is a town in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 26,712 at the 2020 census. It sits 10 miles west of Hartford at the hub of major I-84 interchanges, 20 miles s ...

;

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

; and

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. The institution is a

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

-designated Cancer Center and has

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Centers of Excellence in aging and systems genetics. The mission of The Jackson Laboratory is "to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community." The laboratory is also the world's source for more than 8,000 strains of genetically defined mice, home of the

Mouse Genome Informatics Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) is a free, online database and bioinformatics resource hosted by The Jackson Laboratory, with funding by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Eunice Kenned ...

database, and is an international hub for scientific courses, conferences, training and education.

Major research areas

Jackson Laboratory's research, represented by the activities of more than 60 laboratories, performs researches in six areas: * Cancer: The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center (JAXCC) has a National Cancer Institute designated Cancer Center. Cancer areas of focus include: brain, leukemia, lung, lymphoma, prostate, breast; cancer initiation and progression; cancer prevention and therapies * Development/Reproductive biology: birth defects, Down syndrome, osteoporosis, fertility * Immunology: HIV-AIDS, anemia, autoimmunity, cancer immunology, immune system disorders, lupus, tissue transplant rejection, vaccines * Metabolic diseases: atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity * Neurobiology: blindness, Alzheimer's, deafness, epilepsy, glaucoma, macular degeneration, neurodegenerative diseases * Neurobehavioral disorders: autism, addiction, depression

History

The Jackson Laboratory was founded by

Clarence Cook Little Clarence Cook Little (October 6, 1888 – December 22, 1971) was an American genetics, cancer, and tobacco researcher and academic administrator, as well as a eugenicist. Early life C. C. Little was born in Brookline, Massachusetts and atte ...

, a former

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...

and

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

president, in 1929 in

under the name Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory with the purpose of discovering the causes of cancer and other diseases through research on mammals. The campus was built on 13 acres of land donated by

George Dorr George Bucknam Dorr (December 29, 1853 – August 5, 1944) was an American preservationist. Known as the "father of Acadia National Park,"

. Initial funding for the laboratory campus came from

Edsel Ford Edsel Bryant Ford (November 6, 1893 – May 26, 1943) was an American business executive and philanthropist who was the son of pioneering industrialist Henry Ford and his wife, Clara Jane Bryant Ford. He was the president of Ford Motor Company f ...

, the son of

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...

, and from Roscoe B. Jackson, a one-time head of the

Hudson Motor Car Company The Hudson Motor Car Company made Hudson and other branded automobiles in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., from 1909 until 1954. In 1954, Hudson merged with Nash-Kelvinator to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Hudson name was continued through ...

, for whom the institution is named. As well as providing funds for the first laboratory building, Roscoe B. Jackson provided support for the first five years of operation. The sale of mouse animal models began in 1933 with early sales to the

United States Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services concerned with public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The Assistant S ...

and The Jackson Laboratory now provides a high proportion of the mice used in biomedical research In particular, the C57BL/6J strain, which is widely used and cited is maintained at The Jackson Laboratory. The demand for mice generated at The Jackson Lab increased in 1937, when the Surgeon General supported a

grant to the lab that made mice produced there a de facto industry standard due to federal standardization requirements because it was the only large-scale mouse provider prior to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The research performed at The Jackson Laboratory is associated with at least 26 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine via research, resources, or educational programming. Some notable findings from the institution include: * Established that cancer is a genetic disorder, a novel concept before the Laboratory's founding in 1929. * Dr. Leroy Stevens first described cells that can develop into different tissues – today known as stem cells. * Dr. Elizabeth Russell performed the first bone marrow transplants in a mammal, leading to new treatments for blood and immunological diseases. * Dr. George Snell won the Nobel Prize in 1980 for providing an in-depth understanding of the immune system's major

histocompatibility Histocompatibility, or tissue compatibility, is the property of having the same, or sufficiently similar, alleles of a set of genes called human leukocyte antigens (HLA), or major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Each individual expresses many uni ...

complex, making organ transplants possible. * Dr.

Douglas L. Coleman Douglas L. Coleman (6 October 1931 – 16 April 2014) was a scientist and professor at The Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, Maine. His work predicted that the ob gene encoded the hormone leptin, later co-discovered in 1994 by Jeffrey Friedman, R ...

discovered the hormone

leptin Leptin (from Ancient Greek, Greek λεπτός ''leptos'', "thin" or "light" or "small") is a hormone predominantly made by adipose cells and enterocytes in the small intestine that helps to regulate Energy homeostasis, energy balance by inhib ...

, central to obesity and diabetes research, earning him the Shaw Prize, the Albert Lasker Award, the Gairdner International Award, Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, and the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine. * Use of cancer avatars – mice with implanted human tumors – to test targeted therapies for cancer patients. * Recent research has provided insight into cancer stem cells and treatments for leukemia; progress with type 1 diabetes and lupus; and a breakthrough in extending mammalian life span.

Highlights

Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine dedication ceremony (15284593318) (1)

*A grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences funds the development of new computational tools to understand how multiple genes interact in complex diseases. *The National Institute on Aging provides $25 million to develop new treatments, future therapies based on precision modeling. *The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds phase 2 of the Knockout Mouse Production and Phenotyping Project (KOMP2). *Researchers link mutations to butterfly-shaped pigment dystrophy, an inherited macular disease *Jackson Laboratory researchers discover mutation involved in neurodegeneration *The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine opens in Farmington, CT in October 2014 *In October 2020 it received a $11.8M USD grant from Harold Alfond Foundation.

The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center

The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center (JAXCC) first received its National Cancer Institute designation in 1983 in recognition of the foundational cancer research conducted there. The JAXCC is one of seven NCI-designated Cancer Centers with a focus on basic research. The Jackson Laboratory Cancer Center has a single program, "Genetic Models for Precision Cancer Medicine," composed of three biological themes: cancer cell robustness, genomic and genetic complexity, and progenitor cell biology. The themes emphasize the systems genetics of cancer and translational cancer genomics, and all are supported by the JAX Cancer Center's technological initiatives in mouse modeling, genome analytics and quantitative cell biology.

The Morrell Park fire

On May 10 1989 a flash fire destroyed the Morrell Park mouse production facility. The fire raged for five hours, requiring over 100 firefighters from 15 companies and a total of 16 trucks for the fire to be contained. Four workers of the Colwell Construction Company who were installing fiberglass wallboard in the room where the fire broke out were injured, one with burns over 15 percent of his body. While none of the foundation strains were lost, 300000 production mice (about 50% of their stock) died, resulting in a national shortage of laboratory mice and the layoff of 60 employees. This was the second fire to severely affect the laboratory; the 1947 fire that burned most of the island destroyed most of the laboratory, and its mice. Worldwide donations of funds and mice allowed the lab to resume operations in 1948.

Acquisitions

In October 2021, Jackson Lab bought Japan-based research animal business from Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE: CRL) for $63M USD.

Research resources

* Hosts the

database

Business model

The Jackson Laboratory is recognized by the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

as a public charity. According to organization literature, revenue comes primarily from the sale of materials and services (~70%) and from government support (~25%). Less than 5% of 2012 revenue came from charitable donations.

Notable researchers

Edison Liu Edison T. Liu, M.D. is the former president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and the former director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center (2012-2021). As CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, the organization doublerevenue, faculty and personnel expande ...

Nadia Rosenthal Nadia A. Rosenthal FMedSci is a scientist who specializes in heart development related research. Rosenthal began her undergraduate degree at the University of Wales and then transferred to Harvard. She received her PhD from Harvard Medical School ...

* Charles Lee *

Muriel Davisson Muriel Davisson is an American geneticist who developed the Down syndrome mouse model Ts65Dn. In 1959 she graduated from Pemetic High School in Southwest Harbor, Maine. She holds Ph. D. from Penn State University (1969). She was director of Geneti ...

George Weinstock George M. Weinstock (born February 6, 1949) is an American geneticist and microbiologist on the faculty oThe Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine where he is a professor and the associate director for microbial genomics. Before joining The Jac ...

* Leroy Stevens * Elizabeth Russell * George Snell

Controversy

In 2013, a jury in Maine found that Jackson Laboratory did not violate that state's

whistleblower A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

protection law when they fired an employee who claimed to have been terminated after reporting her concerns about the treatment of animals to the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

Office for Laboratory Animal Welfare. The worker accused the laboratory of "allowing mice to suffer and then die in their cages instead of euthanizing them" and of cutting off the toes of mice to identify them. Jackson Laboratory denied the allegations and said the worker was fired for her confrontational demeanor. In 2009, Jackson Laboratory was fined $161,680 by the EPA for improperly handling and storing hazardous materials.

References

{{authority control Mount Desert Island Buildings and structures in Bar Harbor, Maine Medical research institutes in the United States Cancer organizations based in the United States Companies based in Hancock County, Maine Scientific organizations established in 1929 Medical and health organizations based in Maine Research institutes in Maine Research institutes in California Research institutes in Connecticut