BAR HARBOR — In a weak economy, in a part of Maine that often faces high unemployment, one organization is bucking the trend. And it is working to persuade workers to sign on.
Jackson Laboratory, the Down East region’s largest employer, has been airing a radio employment ad featuring testimonials from workers, who offer plugs like, “Great place to work,” “interesting,” “ethnic diversity,” “nice gym.”
“We now have at least 50 open positions,” public information manager Joyce Peterson said recently.
So why does the lab have so many openings? Could it be that potential employees think “science” and don’t know how they might fit in?
It turns out that, in addition to research, there’s information technology, administration, building and grounds and animal care. Hiring occurs at all levels of education; continued-education opportunities are available.
“We want people to think, ‘Hey, I could work at The Jackson Laboratory,'” Peterson said.
A drive to the lab leads just outside the tourist-choked streets of Bar Harbor and toward the wooded mountains and stony shores of Acadia National Park. The campus has expanded considerably in the past 15 years, with new buildings to conduct biomedical research, administer science and education programs, and house and breed the mice that long ago became the centerpiece of the lab’s world-class reputation.
At the same time, the facility tries to keep a low-impact visual and environmental profile, considering its proximity to the park: Most recent is the installation of the western hemisphere’s largest, energy-efficient wood-pellet boiler.
So what does the lab do? It’s a think tank for understanding the genetic basis of human disease, using the mouse as experimental model. And it breeds, imports and distributes thousands of strains of mice with afflictions similar to human disease. Inbreeding allows genes responsible for illness to be “fixed” in each strain. Newer gene transfer technology allows a disease to be engineered into a strain. This lets researchers at the lab, and worldwide, to use genetically identical strains as experimental models to study the origin and progression of disease, and to test treatments.
THE MOUSE THAT ROARED
The idea of using mice as an experimental platform seems commonplace nowadays. But in the early 1900s, Clarence Cook Little, a Harvard student, was going on a hunch.
“Legend has it he did mouse-breeding experiments in his dormitory bathtub,” said Peterson.
Little was convinced cancer was a genetic disorder, a novel concept at the time. He noticed certain families of mice were more likely than others to develop tumors.
“We now know few cancers are passed down from parent to child,” said Peterson. “But DNA going haywire is involved in every cancer so, really, cancer is the ultimate genetic disease.”
In his view, the mouse was a natural model. They breed quickly. There were plentiful breeding stocks, thanks to mouse fanciers who bred the animals for attractive coat colors. Extensive inbreeding—sister to brother and parent to pup—produced populations both viable and identical, so experiments on all members produce identical results.
“That was by no means widely accepted,” said Peterson. “Look ahead to genome sequencing in the early 2000s. Mice and humans share about 95 percent of genes. So virtually every human gene has a mouse analogue.”
Little envisioned a facility dedicated to genetics research, with mice as a platform. It might have made sense to do that in some metropolitan center of science. How did he end up in quiet Bar Harbor?
As president of the University of Maine, he was familiar with Mount Desert Island, bringing students there for field studies. Later, as president of the University of Michigan, he socialized with automobile barons such as Edsel Ford, many of whom summered on MDI. One was George Dorr, who organized gifts of land that became Acadia. Another was Roscoe Jackson, head of the Hudson Motor Car Company. Dorr provided land and Jackson funds for Little’s lab.
The lab opened in 1929. The stock market crashed. Staff salaries in 1933 were $100 a month; food came from gardens and fishing expeditions. But the initial group of eight scientists made progress. Mouse genetics was catching on, but no other lab had thought to breed multiple inbred mouse lines.
“It turned out to be one of the most important things in science,” Peterson said. “It’s that idiosyncrasy of successful people through history. They glom onto an idea and hang onto it.”
GENES ON A THUMB DRIVE
That idea has come a long way. Today, a convergence of technology and genetics research, or “genomics,” is rapidly materializing the promise of “personalized medicine.”
The genome is the collection of genes contained in each creature’s cells. Each person has a unique genome, differing from another by millions of variations; many variations affect disease susceptibility and treatment response. A laboratory process called genome sequencing now allows scientists to pinpoint associations between specific genes and disease. Thus, disease prediction, prevention and treatment will increasingly be based on an individual’s genomic profile. Physicians will be able to prescribe the most effective drugs with the fewest side effects, based on the patient’s genome-driven response to those drugs.
“It’s not hard to imagine a future where we carry our genome on a thumb drive to the doctor’s office,” said Peterson.
The mouse remains a powerful system for biomedical research. Mice provide models for diseases and conditions such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, glaucoma, neurological and neuromuscular disorders, cancer and many rare diseases. And the “bench to bedside” timeframe—the time it takes for discoveries to have practical, therapeutic value—is shrinking from decades to months or a few years.
The lab endured through two disasters. It was mostly destroyed by the 1947 fire that engulfed Bar Harbor. In 1989, a fire consumed the mouse production facility.
Today, there’s the 43-acre Bar Harbor campus; the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, opening this October in Farmington, Conn.; and JAX-West in Sacramento, Calif.
The Farmington facility, already operating in borrowed quarters, focuses on medical applications of genomics, in partnership with academics and researchers around the world. In Sacramento, a consortium of West Coast researchers is creating a “library” of patient-derived tumors. These tumor cells are implanted in mice with suppressed immune systems, allowing them to grow without being rejected. Researchers study the tumors and test treatment options. This potentially allows drug therapies to be tailored to each patient’s unique genetic makeup.
The lab also bought the former Lowe’s building in Ellsworth; its use remains to be determined.
For this cutting-edge world, the lab also launched a program to provide genetics training to physicians.
“We’re trying to provide an easy way for physicians to get up to speed on genetic medicine, such as how to take a genetic history,” Peterson said. “Most doctors don’t have much background in genetics. Genetic medicine is medicine now. And it’s really changing the world.”