The Jackson Laboratory has ended its push to establish a $328 million personalized medicine research institute in Florida.

On 3 June, Jackson Lab announced that Florida was unable to fulfill the lab’s request for $100 million in state support to launch the institute. The decision brings to an end over a year of negotiations with state and county officials, and appears, for now, to be the death knell of the expansion project. “We’re not currently looking for other opportunities" in Florida or elsewhere, Jackson Lab spokesperson Joyce Peterson said.

State governments have been pouring funds into initiatives to stimulate the local biomedical industry, believing that the efforts will pay off in new jobs and local economic prosperity. (For more on that assumption, see ‘What science is really worth’.) Jackson Lab currently employs 1,400 people in its Bar Harbor, Maine headquarters and satellite labs in Sacramento, California. The lab provides research materials and services, and is perhaps best known for its extensive collection of laboratory mice with different genetic backgrounds.

The notion of a new personalized medicine institute was born when philanthropists in Florida encouraged the lab to establish an outpost in the Sunshine State. The idea was appealing, says Peterson, in part because Jackson Lab was keen to establish close connections with clinicians. Maine, she notes, doesn’t have a medical school.

Jackson Lab had hoped to collect $100 million in state funding and $100 million in funding from Sarasota County, one of the proposed sites for the institute. The plan was to then establish a long-term charitable endowment of about $128 million.

But in the end, the project was killed by the harsh budget realities facing Florida. “They really wanted us to be there,” says Peterson. “But I think it was just the wrong time.”

Image: Jackson Laboratory