The Jackson Laboratory and Florida

March 26, 2010 Bar Harbor, Maine -- In October, The Jackson Laboratory announced that it was considering creating a new institute for personalized medicine in the state of Florida.

The Laboratory is still evaluating this option. At the same time, Florida economic development officials have been working on assembling a package of incentives. Their efforts led to the Florida State Senate’s earmarking $50 million in its draft budget bill for the next fiscal year (allocating $130 million over three years) in state funds to support a Jackson Laboratory facility in Collier County, Fla.

Key factors driving the Laboratory’s interest in establishing a personalized medicine institute in Florida are:

&#bull; The need to be located in a state that already has other research institutes (including branches of Scripps, Torrey Pines, Burnham and Max Planck research institutes) as well as universities and medical schools, for collaboration opportunities &#bull The availability of public funding

Many more steps remain in the Florida legislative process before any funding could be available for this project. Moreover, the Laboratory would have to participate in a competitive process to obtain state funds, for which, in turn, local matching funds and private gifts would also have to be organized. Whatever decision it makes regarding the creation of a personalized medicine institute in Florida, The Jackson Laboratory is committed to maintaining and growing its headquarters campus in Maine.

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community.

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