On Jan. 25, 2010, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine launched a $65 million, three-year project to sequence the complete normal and cancer genomes of 600 pediatric cancer patients. The goal was to define the genomic landscape of pediatric cancer, including some of the least understood and most challenging cancers.

In all, researchers sequenced the complete and normal genomes of about 800 pediatric cancer patients. The project included whole exome and whole transcriptome sequencing of an additional 1,200 patients, which included 23 different cancers. St.ﾠJude Children’s Research Hospital was founded in 1962 by actor Danny Thomas.