Wellcome Sanger Institute

Founded in 1992 to sequence the human genome, the Wellcome Sanger Institute launched the Cancer Genome Project under Michael Stratton in 2000. It reported the BRAF V600E mutation in melanoma in 2002, created the COSMIC catalogue of somatic mutations, defined the mutational signatures framework with Ludmil Alexandrov in 2013, and with the Broad Institute built the cancer dependency map and Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer resources led by Mathew Garnett. Sanger co-founded Open Targets with EMBL-EBI and industry partners and the Human Cell Atlas, and leads the Mutographs Grand Challenge on cancer causes. Its tools underpin much of modern tumour sequencing and target discovery.