On Dec. 6, 2011, Washington University’s Genome Institute received a four-year $114 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute. The university’s Genome Institute was one of only three large federally funded genome centers in the U.S.

The new grant underscores the expertise of the university’s Genome Institute, which contributed heavily to the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003.  Scientists at the Genome Institute became the first to sequence the genome of a cancer patient in 2008. By comparing the patient’s own genome with the genome of her tumor cells, they identified the genetic errors that likely caused her cancer.