St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Quick Facts

  1. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which was founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas in 1962, has treated more than 18,000 children from across the United States and 60 foreign countries.
  2. Located in Memphis, St. Jude is the first institution established for the sole purpose of conducting basic and clinical research into catastrophic childhood diseases, mainly cancer. It is the largest childhood cancer research center in the United States in terms of the number of patients enrolled and successfully treated.
  3. Research findings and information discovered at St. Jude are freely shared with doctors and scientists all over the world.
  4. St. Jude, which is non-sectarian, has approximately 4,000 patients in active status. It treats children without regard to race, religion, creed or ability to pay.
  5. The hospital's daily operating costs are approximately $715,229, which are primarily covered by public contributions.
  6. St. Jude has one of the lowest fundraising costs of any national charity. Out of every dollar donated to St. Jude, 80.2 percent goes to current or future needs of St. Jude Hospital. About 13.4 percent is used to raise additional dollars, and only 6.4 percent is used for administration costs.
  7. Peter C. Doherty, Ph.D., chairman of St. Jude Hospital's immunology department, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1996.
  8. Since 1962, treatment protocols developed at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have brought survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent to better than 70 percent overall.
  9. To treat a child with standard-risk acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) requires a 2 1/2-year protocol. The first year of treatment costs about $272,000.
  10. St. Jude Hospital was the first facility outside the National Institutes of Health to receive federal approval for research involving human gene therapy. The hospital has more open cell and gene therapy protocols than any other single institution in the world.
  11. St. Jude has treated more than 1,000 young cancer patients from Louisiana at no cost to their families.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CALL JENNIFER WOOTON AT 1-800-531-5174.