How has St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital contributed to the treatment of childhood cancer?

Most notably, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital revolutionized treatment for childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) with a breakthrough publication in 1972. The study showed that the combined use of chemotherapy and prophylactic radiation therapy of the central nervous system—part of an approach known as total therapy—increased ALL survival rates to 50 percent. By 2006 St. Jude reported a five-year survival rate of 94 percent for children with ALL.