March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Jackson Laboratory continues to rebuild

BAR HARBOR — One year after a fire killed 400,000 mice and destroyed much of the Jackson Laboratory mouse-breeding facility, officials say production at the renowned research center is back to 70 percent of pre-fire capacity.

The world’s leading center for the study of mouse genetics now is counting on at least $10 million in federal aid from the National Institutes of Health to help finance a full recovery.

“That’s the next crucial step,” said Director Kenneth Paigen, who was just leaving Mount Desert Island on May 10, 1989, after visiting the lab in preparing to assume the director’s post when flames broke out inside the 29-year-old Morrell Park complex.

“We’ll be at 85 percent by the end of this summer. And we’ll be at 100 percent by the end of 1991, if we get the $10 million from NIH,” Paigen said.

Even if production levels are fully restored by 1991, however, Paigen said a major portion of JAX mice, as they are known throughout the scientific research community, will still be bred in temporary facilities.

“And what we have to do is complete the process of building permanent ones before the temporary ones fall down.”

To date, Paigen says, officials at the private, non-profit laboratory are unable to assess international research disruptions caused by the curtailed availability of JAX mice for an estimated $600 million to $1 billion in scientific projects.

“A big chunk,” he says, “but we don’t have the answers yet.

“Some of the common in-breds are in short supply and some of the research strains are in short supply.”

JAX mice are used in research on cancer, AIDS, diabetes, arthritis and thousands of hereditary diseases.

According to an October 1989 report by a panel of consultants convened by federal health officials, Jackson lab’s curtailed production represented “a significant loss of a resource to important national research efforts.”

The panel, assembled by the National Institutes of Health, urged the federal government “to provide funding to quickly help restore this resource.”

The research center in Bar Harbor, founded in 1929 and struck by another catastrophic fire in 1947, reported annual shipments of nearly 2 million mice to researchers in all 50 states and 23 foreign countries prior to last year’s blaze.

“About half of our total production went to provide mice that are unavailable from any other source in the United States,” Paigen says. “That’s in the numbers of mice.

“In the kinds of mice, 95 percent of what’s used in the United States … is only available” from Jackson lab.

In the year before the fire, Paigen said Jackson lab distributed more than 400 types of mice to biomedical researchers. But in its foundation stocks, rebuilt and expanded since 1947, “we have 1,700 on campus potentially available for anybody who wants them.”

In comparison, Paigen says, commercial distributors listed only 20 types.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like