Finding the future New Jackson Laboratory director looks locally for help in global research

Nearly six months after taking the reins at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Richard Woychik envisions additional growth and change for the 74-year-old institution that is among the premier genetic research organizations in the world.

Woychik took over as director in August from Kenneth Paigen, who over 13 years doubled the institution’s staff to more than 1,200. At a time of huge leaps in genetic research, Woychik said he hopes to focus the laboratory’s mouse research on discoveries that will lead to new treatments for human diseases.

“The things that are happening behind these walls are the things that are going to promote discoveries in biomedical research,” said Woychik, who previously was chief scientific officer for Lynx Therapeutics in San Francisco.

During a recent interview in a conference room only slightly insulated from the noise of remodeling, Woychik explained that he wants everyone to know that the mission of the laboratory is to do scientific research as well as “enabling” work for other scientists. He explained that he hopes to see people with diseases such as breast cancer have new treatment options because of the application of genetic research to drug manufacturing.

Woychik, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology, plans for the laboratory to continue to grow under his watch. The number of research staff members, at about 260 now, is expected to eclipse 300 scientists within five years, he said. A building under construction will house some of these new hires.

The laboratory also will look to form partnerships elsewhere in Maine and perhaps the world. It all depends on the scientific needs, Woychik said.

Within Maine, the laboratory is looking for partners that can help further the scientific research with an eye toward treatment discoveries. One important goal is to team medical doctors who do research with the lab’s scientists looking at conditions within the mouse. Woychik notes that the relationship between Jackson Laboratory and Dr. Clifford Rosen, an osteoporosis expert based in Bangor, is the sort of mutual relationship that works well. Rosen brings practical clinical experience to his work studying osteoporosis with Jackson Laboratory scientists.

To find more clinicians who bring patients and knowledge of specific ills in humans to scientists studying the same problems in mice, Woychik is investigating partnerships with hospitals. Portland and eastern Maine are two regions that the laboratory is exploring.

“The one thing I will not do as director of Jackson Laboratory is compromise quality,” he said. The lab isn’t going to become a partner with players in Maine just to do it. He said he wants to be part of an interdependent partnership, where each party brings something the other is absolutely dependent on. That builds a strong partnership, he said.

“This will be sharing,” he said.

One new partnership announced in mid-January teams Jackson Laboratory, the University of Maine and Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Portland to establish an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in functional genomics. A $2.6 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation will fund the program. The idea is to attract and retain talented

researchers in Maine.

Woychik became especially animated as he described how the mapping of the human and mouse genomes has resulted in new opportunities for finding the causes of diseases.

Mice long have been a favorite of scientists in the study of human illnesses, because the mouse’s biology is similar to man’s in that it has two kidneys, two lungs, and so on.

“If you look at the plumbing architecture, it’s all the same,” Woychik noted. But now that the map of human and mouse genomes has been decoded, the similarities are even greater than previously recognized.

“Over 99 percent of genes in humans have a functional counterpart in the mouse,” Woychik said. “Gazing into what it means to know the mouse genome was a very powerful experience for me. All of a sudden we’re experiencing this incredible richness in genetics.”

The mouse is not the only organism that develops diseases, he said. But the important thing is that they develop them in the same way as humans. Of course, the 1 percent difference between mice and men, geneticists say, may be small but it’s important because that variation is what makes us human.

Jackson Laboratory breeds more than 2,600 different types of mice. Each has different characteristics that are useful for studying certain human diseases. The laboratory sells the mice to researchers around the world.

Woychik said there needs to be more thought given to “where we need to be in Jackson to meet the needs of the research community.” For example, he wants Jackson Laboratory to know what kind of mice researchers will need even as the researchers themselves are recognizing what they need for their work. This will speed research by reducing the delay in getting new mice strains to researchers, he explained.

He predicts that within five years, Jackson Laboratory will be selling fewer “plain vanilla” mice for experiments. That’s because there will need to be less duplication of routine experiments because more and more data are being stored in databases maintained at Jackson Laboratory and elsewhere. Instead, scientists will be seeking mice for ever more specialized experiments, he said.

Jackson Laboratory is now, for instance, the central repository for all genetic and biological information about mice, which scientists use worldwide to further their research.

As Woychik goes about refining the course he is setting for the laboratory, he says he is committed to explaining the scientific work going on within its walls.

“I want people to take great pride for having Jackson Laboratory here because of the impact we have on research,” he said.