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΢²ªÊÓƵ and the , or JAX, an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, are expanding their 15-year collaboration to provide mutual support in research infrastructure and educational programs.

The new agreement will enable ΢²ªÊÓƵ to fully use the laboratory’s Sacramento-based infrastructure to reduce long-term capital and operating expenses to the university, while providing flexibility to ΢²ªÊÓƵ investigators and administration.

"This new memorandum of understanding between JAX and ΢²ªÊÓƵ not only stretches research dollars through collaboration, but also enables two nonprofit organizations with similar missions to recruit world-class scientists and contribute to the Sacramento region’s life sciences momentum," said Auro Nair, general manager of JAX clinical and research services. "΢²ªÊÓƵ has been a key ally over the last decade as we grew from 50 employees in 2008 to nearly 200 employees at our Sacramento facility."

Harris Lewin, ΢²ªÊÓƵ vice chancellor of research, said, "As ΢²ªÊÓƵ grows to meet its strategic imperatives, the Jackson Laboratory’s world-class mouse infrastructure and scale in Sacramento can provide a measure of capital and operating flexibility for the university, which should result in more innovative, efficient and scientifically substantive collaborations in the future."

Under the new memorandum of understanding, the institutions will launch several new initiatives in the coming year:

• Research mouse importation program — JAX will assist newly recruited ΢²ªÊÓƵ investigators by picking up their mouse colonies at their previous institutions, establishing new breeding colonies to meet stringent JAX health standards and then delivering the mice to ΢²ªÊÓƵ (or holding them at JAX if space is not yet available on the ΢²ªÊÓƵ campus). This initiative will enable the new investigators to resume their research programs as soon as they arrive on campus, in many cases accelerating their scientific contributions by several months. This strategy also will reduce the level of new capital projects required by the university in an era of tight fiscal constraint.

• Educational programs — JAX will design and run on-site seminars for proper selection of research models in areas of special interest to ΢²ªÊÓƵ researchers. ΢²ªÊÓƵ students, faculty and staff will continue to have access to JAX courses, conferences and other educational programs

• Research infrastructure — Both institutions hope to reduce costs by sharing mouse-based core services, such as ΢²ªÊÓƵ' strong imaging capabilities and JAX’s production-scale mouse cryopreservation facilities.

The JAX-΢²ªÊÓƵ relationship goes back to 1999, when JAX established a small research animal facility on the ΢²ªÊÓƵ campus to expand the university’s then-new mouse biology program. In the following years, JAX established a mouse-production facility in West Sacramento, and, in 2009, moved to larger space in Sacramento.

Today, ΢²ªÊÓƵ-JAX arrangement includes scientific and clinical research on primary cancer tumor xenografts, collaborations among individual scientists, and projects related to the National Institutes of Health Knockout Mouse Project, or KOMP.

JAX, headquartered in Bar Harbor, Maine, has facilities in Farmington, Conn. (the new Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine) as well as Sacramento.