BAR HARBOR, Maine (AP) The federal government has awarded a Maine laboratory more than $750,000 to enhance its use of mice as a model for cancer research.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and independent Sen. Angus King said the grant is going from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Cancer Institute to Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor. Officials with the lab said the money will fund the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Database.

Jackson Laboratory president Edison Liu called the database “a unique online resource that supports the use of the mouse as a model system in cancer research by the worldwide cancer research community.”

The senators said the research is especially important for Maine, which has a higher cancer death rate than the rest of the country.