CRL

Charles River Laboratories International, Inc.

A maker of research animals and drug-development services, Charles River Laboratories supplies the lab rats, mice, and testing that pharmaceutical and biotech companies rely on to bring new medicines to market. It began in 1947 when a young veterinarian, Dr. Henry Foster, started a one-man operation in a Boston loft overlooking the Charles River—the source of its name—personally breeding and hand-delivering the animals to local scientists. Foster paid for his first thousand rat cages with savings from a job as a vet on ships hauling horses to Poland.