How and when did JAX start?
Clarence Cook Little, a pioneer in human genetics research, founded the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory in 1929 in Bar Harbor, Maine. The Laboratory was based on Dr. Little’s unshakable belief that hereditary factors were involved in the development of cancer. To test that idea, he required a precise biological tool to conduct a thorough study of heredity, a need that led to his development of the first inbred strain of laboratory mice. Using this strain and others, he and his colleagues began a quest to explore the genetic complexities of cancer and other human diseases. Bar Harbor, Maine — the Laboratory’s location — was a summer destination of wealthy Detroit automobile industrialists whom Dr. Little, once president of the University of Michigan, cultivated as founding supporters of the Laboratory. Dr. Little persuaded Edsel Ford of The Ford Motor Company and Roscoe B. Jackson, head of the Hudson Motorcar Company, to support a new cancer genetics research laboratory on donat
