Executive says state can grow JAX president talks at Husson breakfast

BANGOR – Maine isn’t a state that can do everything. But by picking a few of the things we do well – tourism, forest products, biomedical research – and by building networks of related enterprise, the state can construct a secure and diverse economic future.

That was the message from Warren C. Cook, president of JAX Research Systems, a subsidiary of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor. Cook spoke Thursday morning to an audience of about 100 Bangor-area business leaders who gathered for breakfast at Husson College.

Cook said northern Maine’s isolation represents significant challenges, even to well-established businesses such as Jackson Laboratory, the largest mammalian genetics research facility in the world. Cook referred to recent groundbreaking discoveries at the lab, including important progress on cancer, diabetes, glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease.

Additionally, the mouse-breeding branch of the lab provides more than 3,000 strains of mice to research labs all over the world. “We’re the Fort Knox of mice,” Cook said.

Despite its prominence in the research field, and despite major local expansions of its programs, facilities and work force, Cook said Jackson Laboratory remains an enigma outside its immediate environs. Many Mainers never have heard of it, he said, and “researchers in Texas think the Jackson Lab’s at the North Pole.”

In response, the lab has sought to raise its visibility. An affiliation with the University of California at Davis has resulted in a higher profile in the opposite corner of the country from Bar Harbor. Closer to home, training facilities in Cherryfield and Fairfield have given the program an off-island presence.

Most importantly, Cook said, Jackson Laboratory is working with other institutions in Maine to create a cluster of high-level biomedical research facilities. The coalition – which includes Jackson Laboratory, MDI Biological Laboratory, the Maine Medical Research Institute, the University of New England and the Foundation for Blood Research – hopes to “raise the level of science in Maine,” attracting other researchers and creating a demand for a highly trained work force.

Cook said a $5 million grant from the state has leveraged seven times that much in matching federal and private research funding. The coalition hopes for voter approval of a $7 million economic development bond next fall to promote further growth of the biomedical research cluster concept.