BAR HARBOR – One of the world’s premier medical research laboratories opened a new science facility Friday and thanked the staff and public for making it happen.

The Jackson Laboratory, marking its 75th anniversary, has been blessed with steady and strong support from government, the medical research community and the public, Rick Woychik, lab director, told a small gathering of staff and guests who helped open the Functional Genomics Building.

The four-story building will accommodate two scientists and their support teams, space for the mice that will be used in the medical research, and support services and laboratories.

“This is a great day for the lab, for Maine and for biomedical research,” Woychik said, describing the new facility as “one of the world’s most technological research labs.”

The $21.7 million facility is part of the lab’s five-year expansion, which is on schedule to conclude in early 2006.

The lab now employs about 1,300 people, up from 500 just a few years ago.

A second major new structure in the expansion is the so-called East Research Building, under construction.

The second building is estimated to cost $29 million.

According to Woychik, the lab was unable to spend $10 million in research grants last year because it lacked the space to do the work.

State Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, helped open the new facility Friday. He remembered how modest the lab was when he was a boy growing up on Mount Desert Island and how he has watched it grow over the decades to become Hancock County’s largest employer.

More than that, Damon noted the lab’s reputation not only for research, but for providing millions of mice a year for other research facilities around the world.

The lab was founded in 1929 by Clarence Cook Little, who was convinced there was a genetic link to cancer and other major diseases and began using mice for his research.

It would be more than 50 years before the biomedical research industry concluded that mice are perhaps the best animals for medical research because their biology and genetic makeup are so similar to humans.

Not only do mice have similar basic systems as humans, such as cardiovascular, skeletal, digestive and reproductive systems, but they also suffer from the same diseases as human beings, from cancer and diabetes to glaucoma and high blood pressure.

As lab spokeswoman Joyce Peterson told the Bar Harbor Town Council two years ago: “Mouse genetics has become the linchpin of biomedical research. Our funding has doubled over the past five years and shows no signs of abating.”

Maine voters gave The Jackson Laboratory and other research facilities, such as the MDI Biological Lab, also in Bar Harbor, a lucrative vote of confidence when they approved a $60 million bond issue in June 2003 for biomedical research in Maine.

About $6 million of the bond was used to complete the lab’s new facility.