Farmington, Conn.—The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine is now a Connecticut-licensed and CLIA-registered clinical laboratory qualified to accept and process clinical samples of human cells and tissues for DNA testing.
Licensing by the Connecticut State Department of Health and registration under CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments), which is granted through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, demonstrates that the JAX facility meets rigorous standards to ensure quality laboratory testing.
"Obtaining these approvals to accept patient samples is a vital step into clinical research for us, as we build a new institution that will break new ground in genomic medicine," says Jackson Laboratory President and CEO Edison T. Liu, M.D.
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine is now operating in temporary lab space on the campus of the UConn Health Center, while a new facility is under construction nearby with an October 2014 opening date. The interim facility now has 76 employees, including 10 principal investigators.
The state and federal approvals cover the Laboratory’s processes, procedures and current facilities; the testing laboratory in the new facility will require additional review.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with facilities in Sacramento, Calif., and 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.