Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) is the world's oldest and largest private cancer center, located in New York City with regional outpatient locations across the greater New York and New Jersey area. MSK is an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center and a major sponsor and site for investigator-initiated cancer clinical trials, with a particular emphasis on Phase 1 first-in-human studies, novel immunotherapy strategies, and precision oncology. MSK's research enterprise integrates laboratory science and clinical investigation more tightly than almost any other institution, allowing laboratory discoveries to be rapidly translated into clinical trials.

MSK is home to specialized programs in virtually every cancer type, including the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care, the Josie Robertson Surgery Center, and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy — a multi-institution collaboration that has advanced CAR-T cell therapy, cancer vaccines, and immune checkpoint research. MSK's Department of Medicine, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP), and the Computational Oncology Program develop and test novel therapeutic hypotheses across a pipeline of early-phase trials.

Pharmacogenomics and genomics-driven trial design are central to MSK's research model. The institution uses the MSK-IMPACT tumor sequencing panel — a 505-gene next-generation sequencing assay — on virtually all tumor biopsies from patients seen at MSK, enabling enrollment in genotype-matched basket trials and providing a rich biomarker-linked clinical database. MSK was a founding member of the AACR Project GENIE consortium, which aggregates genomic and clinical data from 19 major cancer centers worldwide.

Frequently Asked Questions — Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center