A Bar Harbor biomedical research laboratory that studies how some creatures can regrow organs is looking to significantly expand its workforce in the next half-dozen years.
Despite being founded in the late 1890s, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory functioned for decades as strictly a seasonal enterprise and, even a century after its creation, had only nine employees.
This century, the lab has pursued a growth strategy that, while aiming to remain small compared to other biomedical research labs, saw its workforce grow to roughly 50 a decade ago, and to more than 100 now.
And it plans to expand further in the next six years, but without expanding its existing footprint in the local village of Salisbury Cove, lab officials said Wednesday. The lab has a goal of boosting the number of its research groups from 10 to 15 in the next five to seven years, with each research group consisting of 10 researchers for a projected total of roughly 150 people.
“Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory has come a long way,” said Hermann Haller, the lab’s president. “That’s what we are aiming for.”
As MDI Bio Lab has grown, its focus has changed. It used to specialize in the study of marine species such as skates and sharks, but now focuses on regenerative processes in the animal kingdom, with the goal of learning how those biological processes might translate to human health.
If some types of worm can have their lifespans extended by 500 percent, and if a type of Mexican salamander can regenerate its limbs, there may be ways that humans — with the help of biomedicine — could extend their healthy lifespans or regrow a missing arm or leg.
This past summer, the lab acquired and brought online a state-of-the-art lightsheet microscope – only one of four in the United States – that allows researchers to record three-dimensional scans of tissue samples that show the locations of individual nerves. The $500,000 microscope, funded in large part by the federal National Institutes of Health, can help lab researchers track tissue regeneration in the animals they study.
As that focus has changed and the lab has grown, so too has the number of graduate students who come to the lab for research fellowships. Just a few years ago, MDI Bio Lab had nine graduate students among its researchers and now has nearly three times that many, including several pursuing advanced science degrees from University of Maine, University of Toulouse in France, and Hannover Medical School in Germany.
The planned growth is expected to result in a few different projects, lab officials said. It will continue to upgrade some of its older, smaller research buildings that were previously used only seasonally, and likely will build another modern research building somewhere on its 30-acre campus. It currently is renovating one of the houses it owns in the neighborhood to make it suitable for housing graduate students, and plans to make more improvements to roughly a dozen other houses it owns and uses for staff, and to its existing dining hall.
Along with the anticipated capital improvements, the lab expects to spend about $45 million on the planned growth, lab officials said. In addition to physical improvements, much of that will go toward personnel costs by supporting faculty retention and recruitment, graduate student stipends, professional development and endowed graduate fellowships.
Haller, who originally is from Germany and remains affiliated with Hannover Medical School, said that not only has the lab been growing in size, but also in reputation. It is helping to draw researchers like himself from around the world, and, as it grows, is helping to expand Maine’s biomedical research sector.
A decade ago the lab spun off its first for-profit venture, Novo Biosciences, and now is looking to secure another biomedical technology patent that could lead to the creation of another company, he said. Haller did not elaborate on the new potential patent.
“We want to build scientific literacy in the state,” Haller said. “We are building a workforce in Maine.”
