The Jackson Laboratory earns top rating from Charity Navigator

Bar Harbor, Maine - The Jackson Laboratory’s sound fiscal management practices and commitment to accountability and transparency have earned the nonprofit organization a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent charity evaluator. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Laboratory has earned this top distinction.

“The Jackson Laboratory’s coveted four-star rating puts it in a very select group of high-performing charities,” says Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator. “Out of the thousands of nonprofits Charity Navigator evaluates, only one out of four earns four stars—a rating that, now, with our new accountability and transparency metrics, demands even greater rigor, responsibility and commitment to openness. The Jackson Laboratory’s donors should feel confident that their donations are being used efficiently and responsibly when it acquires such a high rating.”

“Our 4-star Charity Navigator rating demonstrates our deep commitment to our fiduciary, governance and stewardship responsibilities,” says Jackson Laboratory Vice President for Development and Communications Kristen Rozansky. “When giving to The Jackson Laboratory, donors are helping to accelerate the pace of discovery and truly contributing to our mission of finding precise genomic solutions for disease and empowering the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.”

Since 2002, using data-driven analysis, Charity Navigator has awarded only the most fiscally responsible organizations a 4-star rating. In 2011, Charity Navigator added a second dimension of Accountability and Transparency (A&T) to its rating methodology, and now reviews 17 governance and ethical practices as well as measures of openness, providing information on its web site for each of the charities it evaluates. The A&T metrics, which account for 50 percent of a charity’s overall rating, reveal which charities have “best practices” that minimize the chance of unethical activities and whether they freely share basic information about their organization with their donors and other stakeholders.

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs a total staff of more than 1,700.

Governor LePage Visits The Jackson Laboratory Highlighting Its Investment in Maine

Bar Harbor, Maine - Governor Paul R. LePage toured The Jackson Laboratory for an update on recent physical plant improvements and construction projects underway on the Bar Harbor campus. Those projects included the renovation of the Snell Research Building, the new chiller plant and the pellet boiler.

"The Jackson Laboratory showcases Maine's global competitiveness in bio-medical research and technology while highlighting local investment in our people and products," said Governor Paul R. LePage. "They hire a world-class workforce, keeping young Mainers here and attracting others to move here. With 1,300 employees and nearly 100 open positions, they offer excellent career possibilities to Maine workers."

These projects represent a major investment in the Bar Harbor campus, with the Snell building

The Jackson Laboratory: Committed to the environment on Earth Day and every day‏

Bar Harbor, Maine - Earth Day is April 22, 2014, but The Jackson Laboratory makes a year-round commitment to the environment, with an extensive roster of “green” initiatives at all three of its campuses.

The Laboratory’s Bar Harbor, Maine, headquarters is situated on scenic Mount Desert Island, directly adjacent to Acadia National Park. In fact, the Laboratory’s very existence is in part due to conservation interests. In the 1920s, wealthy summer island residents promoted the establishment of a national park and scientific research laboratories to preserve the island’s natural environment and prevent the incursion of the logging industry.

Since its founding in 1929, the Laboratory has kept that commitment to the environment, and has received the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership award for energy conservation leadership in the New England region. The long list of energy efficiency and resource conservation initiatives includes the installation, in June 2012, of the largest wood pellet-burning energy plant in the Western Hemisphere.

"This new biomass boiler is reducing the Laboratory's fuel oil consumption by 75 percent, which is about 1.2 million gallons a year," says John Fitzpatrick, the Laboratory's senior director for Facilities Services. "It is allowing us to replace foreign-sourced heating oil with wood pellets that are Maine grown, Maine harvested and Maine processed. We’ve seen substantial cost savings, but more important, there are huge savings environmentally."

The Laboratory also protects Mount Desert Island’s famously dark night skies by using shielded lighting fixtures, operates a carpool and busing program that reduces the number of employee vehicles on the road, implements environmentally sound landscaping and maintenance practices, and has an extensive recycling program.

The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine facility, currently under construction in Farmington, Conn., will meet the stringent environmental building standards known as LEED Gold. LEED – the acronym for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, a program of the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council – is a certification program for buildings, homes and communities that guides their “green” design, construction, operations and maintenance.

JAX Genomic Medicine’s Gold certification level is one step above the Silver-level standard used for most public buildings in Connecticut, according to John Fitzpatrick, P.E., senior director of facilities services at JAX, but it’s the norm for the Laboratory. While JAX doesn’t always apply for the official designation, LEED guidelines figure prominently in new construction as well as renovations at JAX campuses in Maine

Jessica Noonan appointed Jackson Laboratory director of talent acquisition‏

Bar Harbor, Maine - The Jackson Laboratory has hired Jessica Noonan as director of talent acquisition.

Noonan joins The Jackson Laboratory from the Portland, Maine, branch of Unum, a Fortune 500 insurance company, where she rose to director of field recruiting and staffing for the company’s 30 U.S. field offices. She previously held associate generalist and assistant vice president positions at Citigroup Global Transaction Services in Portland.

In her new position, Noonan will be responsible for the recruitment strategies at the Laboratory’s headquarters campus in Bar Harbor, supervising a team of recruiters. She joined the Laboratory on March 31.

With about 1,300 employees in Maine, the Laboratory is currently advertising more than 70 positions including IT specialists, lab technicians and facilities engineers. JAX Human Resources Director Clare Tully says, “It’s essential for us to attract top-tier talent at all job levels. Jessica has the experience and skills that will help us meet that objective.”

A national member of the Society of Human Resources Management, Noonan holds a B.S. in sociology from Illinois State University.

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs more than 1,500 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.

$8.2 million federal research grant awarded to The Jackson Laboratory for research in egg and sperm formation

Bar Harbor, Maine - A Jackson Laboratory research team headed by Professor Ken Paigen, Ph.D., has received a five-year, $8.2 million grant to research early steps in the formation of sperm and eggs.

The multidisciplinary research team includes a molecular biologist, Research Scientist Petko Petkov, Ph.D.; a cytogeneticist, Senior Research Scientist Mary Ann Handel, Ph.D.; and a computational biologist, Assistant Professor Gregory Carter, Ph.D.

The team will focus on a key protein, known as PRDM9, that members of the team discovered several years ago controls the initiation of genetic recombination, the exchange of parts between pairs of chromosomes that is essential for the successful production of sperm or eggs.

“Recombination makes every sperm or egg genetically different from the rest,” Paigen explains, “and these differences are what make all of us—except identical twins, which come from the same sperm and egg—a genetically unique individual. Recombination also made the evolution of all sexually reproducing species possible, including humans.”

Because recombination is so essential, he says, humans and mice lacking PRDM9 are sterile, and spontaneous abortions and birth defects result when recombination goes awry.

What gives PRDM9 the ability to control genetic recombination is its array of zinc fingers. These are literally finger-like extensions of the PRDM9 molecule that make contact with DNA, recognizing the local DNA sequence. Individuals can vary in the collection of zinc fingers on their PRDM9, and when a particular set of PRDM9 fingers finds its correct match along the DNA, it settles down and uses another part of its molecule to chemically modify other neighborhood proteins attached to DNA. The result is a dramatic change in the three-dimensional arrangement of DNA, allowing genetic recombination to begin.          

Using male mice, the JAX research team will focus their research on the molecular details of how PRDM9 manages its multiple tasks, including how its zinc fingers manage to read the sequence of DNA, something that is still largely unknown. They hope that solving this last mystery will have implications that go far beyond genetic recombination and reproduction.

“Our bodies contain over 800 proteins with zinc fingers, each with its own arrangement of fingers; they are by far the most common device all organisms have to regulate how their DNA works,” Paigen says. “Each of these proteins has its own special function, involved in everything from nerve transmission to the origins of cancer.”

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs a total staff of more than 1,500. Its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.

EMMC and The Jackson Lab Awarded Grant to Expand Innovative Cancer Research

Bangor, Maine - Researchers from Eastern Maine Medical Center and The Jackson Laboratory are
expanding work on an innovative research project that could lead to significant advances in cancer treatment, thanks to a $49,900 grant from the Maine Cancer Foundation.

The pilot project enables researchers to closely examine the immune systems of people diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of cancer that affects the blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes. Researchers expect to find patterns in the immune system that will allow them to identify groups of patients that could benefit from new approaches to cancer treatment.

“Chemotherapy is often an effective way of destroying cancer cells, but it can be very hard on the body because it also harms noncancerous cells,” says Jens Rueter, MD, author of the grant and medical director of EMMC’s Biorepository Program. “This research will advance our understanding of immunotherapy, an alternative approach to cancer treatment that stimulates the immune system to attack the patient’s cancer cells. It is an important first step in identifying groups of people whose immune systems show certain markers that make them good candidates for immunotherapy.”

The grant expands an existing two-year-old project by adding incentives for patients to participate, funding data analysis, allowing researchers to develop a control group, and providing education. Seventy people have already participated in the project by providing blood samples, and researchers expect to add 50 more in the next year. Researchers from The Jackson Lab and EMMC hope that their work will someday lead to new, meaningful treatment options for physicians and patients.

“I became involved with the project when I realized there were innovative ways to build upon existing research techniques,” says Joel Graber, Ph.D., associate professor at The Jackson Laboratory. “I believe that by gathering a broad control group of cancer-free individuals, we will improve our understanding of normal variation and consequently improve diagnosis and treatment of cancer. It is exciting to be involved with this world-class research right here in Maine.”

The Jackson Laboratory names new house counsel, Brian R. Leslie

Bar Harbor, Maine — The Jackson Laboratory has appointed Brian R. Leslie, an attorney specializing in intellectual property issues in both corporate and academic settings, as its new general counsel.

Leslie joins the nonprofit Laboratory after nine years as chief intellectual property counsel for a global Fortune 50 company, Archer Daniels Midland Company of Decatur, Ill.

Previously Leslie served as associate general counsel for the University of Pennsylvania and that university’s Health System in Philadelphia (1999-2003), where he was responsible for all intellectual property issues, and as associate intellectual property counsel for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. (1996-1999).

Jackson Executive Vice President and COO, Charles E. Hewett, Ph.D., notes that Leslie’s expertise in intellectual property and “his wisdom and incisiveness as general counsel” will be essential in the coming years. “The Laboratory is