Bar Harbor, Maine, U.S.A., and Melbourne, Australia–Two international centers for mammalian genetics, The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) and the Australian Regenerative Medicine (ARMI) at Monash University, have entered an agreement to establish several cooperative programs and activities.
Under the agreement, the two institutions will explore opportunities for short and long-term faculty and student exchanges, and partner together in new education training and research initiatives.
Professor John Carroll, Ph.D., dean of the faculty of biomedical and psychological sciences at Monash University said the agreement is a great opportunity for two institutions with complementary expertise to advance research and research training.
"Research is a global activity and this agreement will help bring the best scientists from opposite sides of the world together to make important medical discoveries. We very much look forward to partnering with scientists and staff at the Jackson Laboratory," Carroll said.
"Integral to our mission is to empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health," said Robert Braun, Ph.D., professor and vice president for research at The Jackson Laboratory. "At JAX we look forward to working closely with ARMI to develop a strong academic partnership and collaborative research programs including new mouse models of human disease using CRISPR gene editing technology."
JAX recently announced that ARMI founding director Nadia Rosenthal, Ph.D., F.Med.Sci., has been appointed scientific director of mammalian genetics at its headquarters campus in Maine.
Rosenthal has a long history of collaborations with JAX researchers, some of whom will become part of the new cooperative agreement. This includes working with Drs. Janan Eppig and Steve Murray of JAX to generate new mouse strains using Cre technology for the EU-funded consortium known as EUCOMMTools, and with Dr. Gary Churchill to characterize the complex trait of cardiac regeneration using the Diversity Outbred mouse resource.
ARMI will also make available to JAX the transgenic resources that Rosenthal has established to genetically modify other animal models including fish, salamanders, chick (embryo), rats and marmosets, using both classic and CRISPR-mediated gene editing technologies, for comparative studies of gene function.
Located at the Monash Biosciences Precinct on the Clayton campus of Monash University, the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute is a result of the shared vision, ideas and funding of the State Government of Victoria and Monash University. A team of internationally recognized researchers have been recruited to work in ARMI's state of the art research laboratories to provide new advances in regenerative medicine.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution and National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs 1,600 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.
Contact(s):
Joyce Peterson, 207-288-6058, The Jackson Laboratory
Lucy Handford, 03.9903.4815, Monash University
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