BAR HARBOR – The Jackson Laboratory has received a $4.7 million grant from Maine Technology Institute to help expand the lab’s technology capabilities, strengthen its research services offerings, and make commercialization opportunities for new technologies available to Maine businesses, lab officials have announced in a press release.

According the release, the grant will help the lab make strides toward increased research and development capacity by funding pursuit of new inventions and technological innovations. Such scientific developments likely would benefit more than 13,000 scientific researchers in 42 countries who tap into the lab’s research resources and services.

“As we develop new technologies into products for this international community, we will create needs for specific products that we cannot mass produce ourselves, since we specialize in research, not manufacturing,” Dr. Rick Woychik, the lab’s president and CEO, said in the release. “These are opportunities we would pass to Maine businesses, and we will assist them to enter the international biotech services markets with their products.”

Jackson Lab, which has an operating budget of $168.9 million and nearly 1,400 employees, specializes in studying human diseases and in reproducing mice used by the lab and other scientific institutions for such research.