JAX Farmington leader given Nobel odds

Submitted photo Charles Lee

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In its annual prediction of science-related Nobel Prize winners, Thomson Reuters has named Charles Lee, medical director of Jackson Labs, as one of seven men that could win a Nobel Prize in medicine next month.

Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property & Science Division included Lee on its predictions list because of research related to his 2004 discovery of widespread structural variation in the human genome, or “copy number variation,” and its association with specific diseases. Lee was a researcher at Harvard University at the time.

To make its picks, Thomson Reuters uses proprietary data on research paper citations and other measures to gauge influence. The company has been issuing predictions since 2002, accurately picking 35 winners over that time, five of whom won the same year they were predicted.

The company issued 27 overall picks this week, but a spokeswoman said the number of picks can vary each year.

Lee — one of the Hartford Business Journal’s ‘5 To Watch in 2014’ — came to Farmington from Harvard University in Aug. 2013 to lead the Maine-based genetics research institution’s genomics center on UConn Health’s campus.

The 189,000-square-foot facility, backed by $291 million in state loans and grants, is scheduled to open next month. The funding is the largest bioscience investment the state has ever made, and is part of its $1 billion Bioscience Connecticut initiative.