2024 Impact Report
The Jane Coffin Childs Fund (JCC) was founded in 1937 and the postdoctoral fellowship program that forms the core of JCC was initiated in 1944. For the first time ever JCC has compiled an Impact Report to analyze past contributions, track the trajectory of the foundation’s evolution over the last 87 years, and prepare for a future of even greater impact. You can read the 2024 Impact Report in its entirety here, and read highlights about our findings below.
Generational Impact & Exponential Returns
JCC was started by the Childs Family in memory of Jane Coffin Childs who passed due to breast cancer. Starting with a 3.5 million dollar endowment in 1937 – the largest contribution for cancer research in US history at that time – they’ve invested over 150 million dollars to support nearly 1,600 fellows and grantees over the last 87 years.
From early on the Board of Managers and Board of Scientific Advisors understood that the immense complexity of human disease necessitated a sustained effort towards understanding the cellular bases of human health, and that training the next generations of biomedical scientists would be key in this endeavor.
Alumni of the JCC fellowship program have amplified this investment into scientific research in many ways. Among the impressive numbers that attest to this impact include:
- 80 former JCC Fellows are members of the National Academy of Sciences and 7 Nobel laureates.
- Projects supported directly by JCC led to over 7,000 publications, and alumni have produced over 30,000 articles.
- Alumni have obtained a combined 7.2 billion dollars in research grants – every $1 invested by JCC generated an additional $48 in downstream scientific funding.
Flexible Support for Interdisciplinary and Integrative Approaches
While cancer research is at the heart of JCC’s founding, the Boards have long emphasized the need to fund and support broad interdisciplinary research and integrative approaches. Research is notoriously unpredictable; it’s hard to know where the next breakthrough in biomedical science will come from.
One timely example of this is CRISPR gene-editing technology. Nearly two decades ago JCC supported a fellowship on bacterial immunity that provided key insight into how these molecular systems work. Today, gene-editing systems developed from these findings treat patients with anemias and are in clinical trials for a slew of other diseases, including many types of cancer.
By supporting emerging experts across a broad swath of disciplines JCC aims to provide an environment that is conducive for cultivating the next breakthroughs in biomedical research.
Supporting the Future of Biomedical Research
While these numbers and analyses detail JCC’s past, the Foundation continues to be forward looking in supporting the next generation of transformational biomedical scientists. Our current fellows are pushing the boundaries of many scientific frontiers in diverse disciplines spanning ecology to neuroscience, from chemical biology to biophysics and more. Keep up to date with our outstanding Fellows and their research by checking out our blog, fellow profiles, and social media sites (Twitter, Blue Sky, LinkedIn).