1958: Princess Margaret Hospital opens on Sherbourne Street in Toronto

Late 1950s: Dr. Vera Peters uses radiation to cure Hodgkin's disease

Late 1950s: Dr. Vera Peters introduces breast-conserving surgery called 'lumpectomy' for women with early stage breast cancer

1959: Dr. Harold Johns pioneers high-dose radiation therapy known as the 'cobalt bomb'

1961: Dr. James Till and Dr. Ernest McCulloch discover stem cells

1971: Bone marrow transplant unit performs first transplant between unrelated donors

Early 1970s: Team designs and builds the Hemitron, a machine that delivers full and half-body radiation

1984: Dr. Tak Mak clones the T-cell receptor, known as the 'Holy Grail' of immunology

1995: The Princess Margaret moves to new location at 610 University Avenue

1996: Dr. Mark Bernstein performs 'awake' craniotomy to remove brain tumour, with same-day discharge

1996: Chemotherapy treatment for hormone-resistant prostate cancer (Dr. Ian Tannock and Dr. Malcolm Moore)

1999: Doctors use toxin to rid bone marrow of cancer cells, improving treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and breast cancer

1999: First North American installation of full-field digital mammography at Princess Margaret and Mount Sinai Hospitals, enabling earlier diagnosis of breast cancer with less radiation exposure

2000: Surgeons use robotic laparoscopic technology to perform a radical prostatectomy

2000: Researchers identify IL-13 as the driver of Hodgkin's Disease

2001: Discovery that a protein called Interleukin 13 fuels the growth of Hodgkin's lymphoma (Dr. Tak Mak)

2002: Dr. Pamela Ohashi identifies an immune molecule called IRAK-4, critical in defense against infections (Dr. Wen-Chen, Dr. Tak Mak and Dr. Pam Ohashi)

2002: Together with The Hospital for Sick Children, researchers identify a gene that, when mutated, results in medulloblastoma, the most common brain tumour in children

2002: Dr. Frances Shepherd leads a team that identifies 'gene clusters' involved in lung cancer (Drs. Denis Wigle, Igor Jurisica, Jim Woodgett, Shaf Keshavjee, Gail Darling, Frances Shepherd, and Ming Tsao)

2003: Dr. Brenda Gallie develops a method for detecting gene mutations that enhance care for families with retinoblastoma

2003: Integration of cone-beam CT into radiation therapy procedures (Dr. David Jaffray)

2005: Dr. Norman Boyd identifies breast density as a major risk factor for breast cancer, and later demonstrates that it is highly inheritable

2006: Dr. John Dick identifies colon cancer stem cells

2007: Dr. Laurie Ailles isolates cancer stem cells in head & neck cancers

2008: Drs. Frances Shepherd, Ming Tsao, and Igor Jurisica identify a gene 'signature' that predicts lung cancer patients' response to chemotherapy in combination with surgery

2012: Dr. John Dick isolates a human blood stem cell in it's purest form - as a single stem cell capable of regenerating the entire blood system

2012: The Princess Margaret is the first site in Canada to use a robot to produce chemotherapy doses for patients

2012: The Princess Margaret is one of the first hospitals in Ontario to offer patients 3-Dimensional breast mammography scans, called "tomosynthesis"