Jackson Laboratory, a leading research institution of genomic medicine, is located in Bar Harbor Maine. The laboratory was founded as a research institute that promoted mammalian genetics research and was one of the early advocates of understanding human disease via genetics. Over the years, and initially as a source of funds for research, the institution started to see their mice models as commodities to be sold to members of the scientific research community. Today, almost 70 percent of the laboratory’s revenue is generated through sales of different mice species.

Laboratory mice are a global commodity. But what sort of commodity and with what implications for the ways human disease is studied and understood? In this paper, I chronicle the making, selling and distributing of Jackson Laboratory’s most popular mice species: the NSG mice. Used for research on both cancer and immune diseases (e.g. HIV), these mice are scientific objects both symptomatic and constitutive of global medical research networks. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews at Jackson Laboratory, this paper chronicles the life of this animal species. The paper has four focus first, to overview the intellectual ownership battles of NSG mice species; second, to detail the digital infrastructures the institution creates to enable these mice to be used; third, to underscore the various ways these mice are used as currency to fund further research and fourth to explore the relationship between ethics and engagement with affect in light of this  practice of commodification of laboratory animals. Through these four instances, the paper aims to give a sense of the global networks formed around these mice species and to comment on the make-up and motivations of global disease research and to comment on rethinking agency as a multi-species possibility and a problem.