Retired energy executive Michael Wray is alive today thanks to heart-transplant surgery. His life-saving operation, and that of every other organ recipient, was made possible by research done decades earlier at The Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit genetics research institution in Bar Harbor, Maine.
The Jackson Laboratory was founded in 1929 as a cancer research institute. Founder Clarence Cook Little was among the first scientists to propose that cancer was a genetic disorder, not an infectious disease.
Little began developing the first genetically defined mouse models for testing this idea. Mice, it would turn out, are 95 percent genetically similar to human beings, and they get most of the same diseases people get, and for the same genetic reasons.
Eight decades of genetics research at The Jackson Laboratory has improved countless lives, with a research legacy that includes:
• Nobel Prize-winning research into immunology that made organ transplants possible
• The first successful mammalian bone marrow transplantation to cure a blood disorder, and
• Award-winning research that provided the first genetic factors associated with obesity
Today, the practice of medicine is largely reactive and based on broad statistical averages; a treatment that works for some people is applied to everyone, with mixed results.
The Jackson Laboratory is determined to change this. With ever-increasing precision, we identify the genetic and molecular bases of disease and marshal our strengths in genomics and modeling to discover individualized treatments and cures.
Our science will transform medicine: improving care, lowering costs, and increasing lifespan and healthspan. Learn more at www.jax.org/ct
