On Jan. 19, 2016, the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis announced it receipt of a $60 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the genetics of common diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, autism and epilepsy.

The McDonnell Genome Institute joined three other institutions in forming the Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG) network, funded by the NIH. The partner institutions are the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Baylor College of Medicine and the New York Genome Center. Grants to all four institutions establishing the CCDG network total $240 million.