Jackson Laboratory Granted $350,000 from Fannie E. Rippel Foundation Towards Mouse Model Repository Center
| Date: March 17, 2004 | 
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Bar Harbor, Maine – The Jackson Laboratory houses the world’s largest collection of genetically defined laboratory mice. A $350,000 grant from the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation of Basking Ridge, N.J., will help the nonprofit genetics research institution construct a repository center for the maintenance and distribution of mouse models.
“This generous gift,” says Jackson Laboratory Director Rick Woychik, Ph.D., “will greatly enhance our ability to maintain and distribute these special mice to the worldwide scientific community.”
The Laboratory’s future repository center will consolidate approximately 20 mouse colonies into a single breeding facility, a project that will help the Laboratory deliver these valuable mice more quickly, efficiently and economically to the researchers at other institutions who need them. The total cost of constructing the center is estimated at $2.2 million.
The gift from the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation will fund construction of a high-tech, controlled-access, sterile corridor between the Laboratory’s clean supply area and the Repository mouse rooms, enabling efficient, indoor delivery of sterile supplies. Such a sterile supply corridor is critical in providing a pathogen-free environment for these valuable mice.
Dr. Woychik notes, “This new grant is just one of many significant Rippel Foundation gifts to The Jackson Laboratory over the course of 32 years. The Foundation recognizes that we are a resource to researchers around the world, including our own, and have provided invaluable support for the infrastructure we need to serve researchers better.”
The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, established by the late Julius S. Rippel as a memorial to his wife, has a particular interest in cancer and heart disease research. The Rippel Foundation is a longtime supporter of The Jackson Laboratory’s programs in those human disease areas. Past awards include the acquisition of a sterilizer system (1989) and equipment for four mouse breeding rooms (1993); these components are still in use, housed in two existing buildings to be connected within the Repository Center. The Laboratory’s previous grant from the Rippel Foundation, awarded in 2000, supported construction of the Genetic Resources Building.
Best known for its genetics research, with 37 principal investigators studying every major human disease and developing new biomedical technologies and information systems, The Jackson Laboratory maintains more than 2,800 strains (varieties) of mice, each serving as a model for one or more human diseases and disorders.
With more than 1,300 employees and an operating budget of $127 million, the 75-year-old Jackson Laboratory is one of Maine's largest employers. Its 350-person research staff investigates the genetic basis of cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, diabetes and many other human diseases and disorders. The Laboratory is also home of the Mouse Genome Database and many other publicly available information resources, and is an international hub for scientific courses, conferences, training and education—including programs for Maine high school, college and graduate students.
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