Sacramento, Calif. – The Jackson Laboratory is launching a $27 million expansion of its JAX—West facility in Sacramento, adding new vivarium space to house and care for genetically defined mice that are provided to the West Coast biomedical research community.
Kathy Vandegrift, associate general manager of JAX Mice & Services, explains, “It is critical to our mission to make our specialized mouse models conveniently available to the West Coast for pharmaceutical, biotech and academic researchers.”
Vandegrift notes that there are also “significant biosecurity and redundancy benefits to balancing our production more evenly between our East and West Coast facilities. As our Sacramento facility expands, it enables us to distribute in an easterly direction over the Rockies and into the remainder of the United States.”
She adds, “We are pleased to be expanding in Sacramento. We can take advantage of the tremendous human capital available here as well as Sacramento’s location at an important intersection of West Coast commerce.”
In 2001 the Laboratory established a small facility at UC Davis to begin exploring a West Coast expansion. Within a few years, growth necessitated a move to larger West Sacramento facilities. Finally, in 2009 the Laboratory moved into larger space in Sacramento. With the expansion announced today, the JAX—West facility’s employee count of 132 is expected to grow to more than 200, and square-footage expansion from 115,000 to 165,000.
Like the existing vivarium facilities at JAX—West, the new space will provide a pathogen-free environment in which to raise the highest health status laboratory mice. “To serve their role in research, these animals must be maintained and cared for in environments with limited bacterial and viral exposure,” says Vandegrift.
The Jackson Laboratory, based in Bar Harbor, Maine, is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution. The Laboratory’s mission includes breeding and distributing mouse models to biomedical researchers worldwide.
Besides the Bar Harbor and Sacramento facilities, The Jackson Laboratory is developing a new genomic medicine research institute in Farmington, Conn., and employs a total staff of more than 1,400. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human disease and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.
Contact(s): Joyce Peterson, 207-288-6058
For information on automatic email delivery of news releases (journalists only), please send an email request for details to news@jax.org. Please address other inquiries to pubinfo@jax.org.
Media Relations, Communications Office
The Jackson Laboratory
600 Main Street
Bar Harbor, Maine 04609-1500
Phone: 207-288-6058 (journalists only)
Main Jackson Laboratory phone: 207-288-6000
Fax: 207-288-6076
Email: news@jax.org
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