The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, located in Seattle, Washington was established in 1975 and is one of the world's leading cancer-research institutes. Its interdisciplinary teams of scientists conduct research in the laboratory, at patient bedside, and in communities throughout the world to advance the prevention, early detection, and treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Center researchers pioneered bone-marrow transplantation for leukemia and other blood diseases. This research has cured thousands of patients worldwide and has boosted survival rates for certain forms of leukemia from zero to as high as 85 percent.
The Center grew out of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, founded in 1956 by Dr. William Hutchinson. The Foundation was dedicated to the study of heart surgery, cancer, and diseases of the endocrine system. In 1964, Dr. Hutchinson's brother Fred Hutchinson, who had been a baseball player for the Seattle Rainiers and Detroit Tigers and later managed the Rainiers, the Tigers, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds, died of lung cancer. The next year, Dr. Hutchinson established the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as a division of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation. The Center split off from its parent foundation in 1972, and the physical center was opened in 1975.

Nobel Prize Recipients
The Hutchinson Center is home to three recipients of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Linda Buck, Ph.D., received the award in 2004 for solving many details of the olfactory system – the complex network that governs our sense of smell. [1]
Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., the Center's president and director, received the honor in 2001 for his discoveries regarding the mechanisms that control cell division [2]; and
E. Donnall Thomas, M.D., received the award in 1990 for his pioneering work in bone-marrow transplantation [3];