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48 | DOING BUSINESS IN CONNECTICUT | 2019 HEALTH & BIOPHARMA Of Mice and Men JAX Labs uses biomolecular modeling to advance patient health By Carol Latter In the fall of 2014, The Jackson Laboratory – a biomedical research organization founded in Bar Harbor in 1929 – opened the doors of the JAX Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, a 183,500-square-foot facility on the campus of the University of Connecticut Health Center. The mission was to collaborate with local healthcare organizations, universities and biomedical startups, to jump-start the application of its mammalian genetics and mouse-breeding expertise to the treatment of patients with serious medical conditions. Because mice are biologically similar to humans, have genetic susceptibilities to the same diseases, and can be genetically manipulated to mimic most human diseases and conditions, mice have been used for more than a century to better understand the causes – and potential cures – for everything from glaucoma, bacterial infections and polio to Alzheimer's disease and cancer. The Maine-based Jackson Laboratory pioneered the use of mice in disease research, was for many years the "undisputed world leader" in breeding mice for this purpose, has won global acclaim for its contributions to the field, and today provides mouse models and services to more than 20,000 laboratories across the world. But while all of this has greatly benefited the biomedical community and led to significant medical advances, the company felt that becoming more directly involved in improving human health could broaden the impact of its research on patients, said Miguel Ilzarbe, director of operations and administration for JAX Genomic Medicine. It found the ideal home for its new facility in Farmington, and five years later, JAX is engaged in a variety of Connecticut-based partnerships that are fundamentally changing the way patient diseases are treated. Just one example is a project being carried out in conjunction with Connecticut Children's Medical Center, in which tumors taken from pediatric patients are "xenografted" onto mice. Researchers then treat the mouse with various drugs to determine which is the most effective. In the past, Ilzarbe said, researchers and clinicians thought of cancer as just organ-specific – a patient had breast cancer or liver cancer, for example. "What we're finding is that each person is different in their genome and each of these cancers is caused by different types of environmental factors or familial history. There are many more mutations that can cause a type of cancer than we had originally anticipated. So a patient doesn't just have breast cancer. She has a particular type of breast cancer." Whereas 15 years ago, most cancer patients would receive chemotherapy, tumor samples can now be characterized at a molecular level at JAX's CLIA-certified diagnostic lab and compared with known mutations. The patient is then treated with the drugs that have been shown to be most effective against that exact type of cancer. "That is a huge quality of life [issue] for someone who may not need to undergo chemotherapy but could use a specific type of drug," Ilzarbe said. "We have also partnered with some veterinarians across Connecticut to do the same kind of work for canine cancers – and then create a canine cancer repository." In that project, dog cancers are Jackson Laboratory's 183,500-square-foot research facility is located on the campus of the UConn Health Center in Farmington. HEALTH & BIOPHARMA