Quick Facts About St. Jude

Over the next 2 days, 97.3 The Dawg is teaming up once again with St. Jude Children's Hospital for our annual Country Cares St. Jude Radiothon to raise money for the kids of St. Jude. As we ask you to become a partner in hope with us, I thought I'd share a few quick facts with you about St. Jude.

• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital opened on February 4, 1962 and was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas. Its mission is to find cures for children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases through research and treatment.
• St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and from around the world.
• On average, 7,800 active patients visit the hospital each year, most of whom are treated on an outpatient basis.
• St. Jude has 78 inpatient beds and treats upwards of 260 patients each day.
• St. Jude is the first and only pediatric cancer center to be designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute.
• St. Jude is the first institution established for the sole purpose of conducting basic and clinical research and treatment into catastrophic childhood diseases, mainly cancer.
• Research findings at St. Jude are shared freely with doctors and scientists all over the world.
• The medical and scientific staff published more than 680 articles in academic journals in 2010, more than any other pediatric cancer research center in the United States. St. Jude’s researchers are published and cited more often in high impact publications than any other private pediatric oncology institution in America.
• No family ever pays St. Jude for anything.
• Parents magazine named St. Jude as one of the top children's cancer care hospitals in the U.S. for two consecutive surveys.
• St. Jude has developed protocols that have helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent when the hospital opened in 1962 to 80 percent today.
• In 1962, the survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer, was 4 percent. Today, the survival rate for this once deadly disease is 94 percent, thanks to research and treatment protocols developed at St. Jude.
• The daily operating cost for St. Jude is $1.8 million, which is primarily covered by public contributions.
• During the past five years, 81 cents of every dollar received has supported the research and treatment at St. Jude.
• St. Jude recently completed an extensive expansion program that bolstered the hospital’s research and treatment efforts, while more than doubling the size of its original campus. The campus now has 2.5 million square feet of research, clinical and administrative space dedicated to finding cures and saving children. The expansion included the Children’s GMP, LLC, currently the nation’s only pediatric research center on-site facility for the research and production of highly specialized treatments and vaccines; an expanded Department of Immunology; and a new Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics for discovery of new drugs.
• The Chili’s Care Center, opened in November 2007, integrates patient care and research where rapidly evolving CT (computerized tomography) and MR (magnetic resonance) technologies keep St. Jude at the cutting edge for radiation therapy in a pediatric/adolescent setting. Additionally, a state-of-the-art cyclotron enables St. Jude researchers to undertake many important new PET (positron emission tomography) studies. These imaging techniques facilitate the rapid evaluation of new therapeutic approaches and help choose those most likely to be successful.
• St. Jude pioneered a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to treat childhood cancers.
• Peter C. Doherty, PhD, of St. Jude Immunology, 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.
• St. Jude patients are referred by a physician, and generally have a disease currently under study and are eligible for a current research protocol on clinical research trials.
• St. Jude researchers and doctors are treating children with pediatric AIDS, as well as using new drugs and therapies to fight 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 programs in the country.
• St. Jude is a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Animals and Birds.
• St. Jude was the first facility outside the National Institutes of Health to receive federal approval for research involving human gene therapy.
• The St. Jude faculty includes three National Academy of Sciences members: Peter C. Doherty, PhD, of Immunology; Charles Sherr, MD, PhD, of Tumor Cell Biology; and Robert Webster, PhD, of Infectious Diseases. Sherr and Brenda Schulman, PhD, Structural Biology, hold the coveted title of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators.
• The St. Jude faculty also includes five members of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences: William E. Evans, St. Jude director and chief executive officer; Arthur Nienhuis, MD, of Hematology and former director and CEO; Charles Sherr, MD, PhD, of Tumor Cell Biology; Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty, PhD, of Immunology; and Mary Relling, PharmD, Pharmaceutical Sciences chair.
• St. Jude is the national coordinating center for the National Cancer Institute-funded Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium. St. Jude is the coordinating center for the nationwide Children’s Cancer Survivor Study, funded by the National Cancer Institute. St. Jude is the national coordinating center for the National Cancer Institute-sponsored Pediatric Drug Discovery Consortium. 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 Cancer Institute.