Jim and Virginia Stowers, cancer survivors and founders of American Century Investments, endowed the Institute with gifts totaling $2 billion in the hope that it will point the way to long-term solutions for gene-based diseases. The Stowers Institute opened its doors to the first scientific research teams in November 2000 after completion of its state-of-the-art research facility in Kansas City, Missouri. Today, the Institute accommodates twenty-four independent research programs and more than 500 people work at the Institute on a daily basis, including nearly 100 postdoctoral research associates and 40 graduate students. Notable discoveries from the Institute's laboratories appear regularly in the leading peer-reviewed journals in biomedicine. Stowers scientists have quickly established the Institute's international reputation for highest quality basic research aimed at finding answers to some of the most important questions of human biology, health, and disease.