St. Jude Facts
St. Jude is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other deadly diseases.
No Place Like St. Jude
Pioneering Treatments
Leading-Edge Research
By the Numbers
Selected Faculty Honors & Awards
- Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing and food – because all a family should worry about is helping their child live.
- Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to more than 80 percent since it opened in 1962.
- St. Jude is working to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 90 percent in the next decade. We won’t stop until no child dies from cancer.
- St. Jude freely shares the breakthroughs we make, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children.
- Because the majority of St. Jude funding comes from individual contributors, St. Jude has the freedom to focus on what matters most – saving kids regardless of their financial situation.
- St. Jude was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, who believed that “No child should die in the dawn of life.”
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- St. Jude is where doctors send their toughest cases because St. Jude has the world’s best survival rates for the most aggressive childhood cancers.
- We are a top national referral center for children with tough-to-treat forms of cancer or who have not responded successfully to standard treatments.
- St. Jude is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children.
- St. Jude has helped increase the survival rates for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) from 4% before opening in 1962 to 94% today.
- We develop new treatments that reduce side effects while maintaining or improving outcomes, so that survivors of childhood cancer can have the best possible long-term health.
- Because we have seen our patients with brain tumors improve dramatically through proton therapy, we are building the world’s first proton therapy center dedicated solely to treating children.
- St. Jude researchers and doctors have research and treatment programs for children with pediatric HIV and AIDS, as well as using new drugs and therapies to fight related infections.
- St. Jude was the first institution to develop a cure for sickle cell disease with a bone marrow transplant and has one of the largest pediatric sickle cell disease programs in the country.
- St. Jude was the first pediatric cancer research center in the U.S. with an on-site current Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility, which produces innovative biopharmaceuticals and other products for use in St. Jude-led clinical trials.
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- St. Jude is a world leader in developing new, improved treatments for children with cancer. We create more clinical trials for cancer than any other children's hospital.
- We also research areas of medicine that pose a risk to children with cancer, such as infectious diseases.
- Through the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital-Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project, we have completed whole genome sequencing of more than 700 pediatric cancers along with 700 matched normal genomes from the same children. This bold project has produced significant discoveries for children with tough-to-treat cancers.
- In May 2012, St. Jude released the largest-ever compilation of comprehensive whole genome human cancer data for access by the global scientific community (4,200 billion pieces of data).
- A gene therapy treatment invented by St. Jude and given as a single treatment allows adults with hemophilia B to cease ongoing, expensive injections. This new treatment is expected to be adapted for children and for other diseases.
- St. Jude medical and scientific staff published more than 800 articles published in peer-reviewed journals in 2012. That’s an average of one published paper every 11 hours sharing new research findings.
- St. Jude is the national coordinating center for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium and the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, both funded by the National Cancer Institute.
- St. Jude is the coordinating center for a national study of sickle cell disease treatment funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
- St. Jude is a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Animals and Birds.
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- St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and around the world.
- On average, St. Jude has more than 67,000 patient visits each year.
- St. Jude published 775 research articles in peer-reviewed journals in 2012. That equals, on average, a new discovery shared every 11 hours.
- St. Jude has been recognized by FORTUNE magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” by The Scientist as one of the top 10 “Best Places to Work in Academia,” and by U.S. News & World Report and Parents magazine as a top children’s cancer hospital.
- The daily operating cost for St. Jude is $1.9 million, which is primarily covered by individual contributions.
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- Peter C. Doherty, PhD, who holds the Michael F. Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research at St. Jude, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996. He shares the award with Rolf M. Zinkernagel, MD, of the University of Zurich. Their findings have led to breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of viral infections and cancers, and in the development of organ transplant procedures and vaccines.
- Members of the National Academy of Sciences:
- Members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences:
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators:
More Honors and Awards
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Research
