On Nov. 5, 2008, Siteman Cancer Center and The Genome Center researchers Timothy J. Ley, MD, Elaine Mardis, PhD, and Richard Wilson, PhD sequenced the first human cancer genome from a patient was acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

The researchers discovered just 10 genetic mutations in the patient’s tumor DNA that appeared to be relevant to her disease; eight of the mutations were rare and occurred in genes that had never been linked to AML.The study is reported in the journal Nature.