Your 2025 annual funding report

Researching rare cancers 
$11.9 million

Cycle for Survival funding makes it possible for MSK investigators, who are world-leading experts in many types of rare cancers, to research new and better ways to treat people with these complex diseases. This work includes initiating and conducting clinical trials fueled by this community. 
 

Brain cancers: $4.7 million 
Researchers at MSK are advancing molecular diagnostics and targeted therapies for many types of brain cancer, including high-grade gliomas.

Pediatric cancers: $3.4 million 
All pediatric cancers are rare cancers, and they are significantly underfunded. At MSK Kids, MSK’s pediatric program, discoveries are transforming treatment and improving survival for children with cancer around the world.

Team-directed funds: $2.5 million 
Cycle for Survival teams direct funding to a wide range of rare cancer research at MSK. These dollars support everything from breakthroughs in molecular oncology and immunotherapies for blood cancers to precision treatments for sarcoma and pioneering therapies to treat head and neck, gastrointestinal, and gynecologic cancers. Every team helps accelerate progress toward faster diagnoses and better treatments and cures for people facing rare cancers. See the full list of MSK researchers who are team-directed funding recipients.

Sarcomas: $1.3 million  
MSK scientists are deepening our understanding of nearly 100 sarcoma subtypes and pioneering targeted therapies to bring new hope to people facing these rare cancers.

Translating research into impact
$7.5 million

MSK teams are leading the way forward in turning discoveries in the lab into innovative new ways to treat people with rare cancers, from precision therapies to cancer vaccines that help the immune system find and fight cancer. The efforts that you support offer more hope for new cures than ever before. 
  
 

The Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program: $5 million
The Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at MSK is an incubator for novel cancer therapies, bringing together physicians and scientists working at the forefront of translational cancer research. HOPP investigators have one foot in the lab and one foot in the clinic, bridging the gap between scientific discoveries and the people with rare cancers who can benefit from them.

Immuno-Oncology: $2.5 million
Immuno-oncology is one of the most transformational breakthroughs in modern medicine, and many of the greatest advances were driven by MSK with support from the Cycle for Survival community. The interactions between immune and cancer cells shape the evolution of the disease, and immunotherapy, which harnesses a person’s own immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells, has profoundly changed the treatment of people facing rare cancers.
 

Outsmarting cancer
$7 million

Thanks to your support, Cycle for Survival is funding research at MSK that reveals the building blocks and genetic switches of how cancer starts, grows, and spreads. MSK scientists are using this knowledge to stop the disease in its tracks. 
 

Sloan Kettering Institute: $5 million 
Researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI), MSK’s research arm, rely on funding from Cycle for Survival to understand rare cancers at the molecular level. Your support helps power the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology (CMO) and SKI’s Cancer Biology and Genetics, Molecular Biology, and Molecular Pharmacology programs, and fuels innovations including genomic tools like MSK-IMPACT®, studies on DNA repair and tumor formation, and targeted therapies that precisely attack cancer cells while reducing side effects.

Innovative diagnostics: $2 million 
The CMO brings together laboratory, computational, and clinical researchers to create and implement leading-edge genomic technologies. 

Funding the technology of tomorrow, today 
With Cycle for Survival support, CMO scientists have led advances in precision oncology: tailoring treatment to the molecular drivers of each tumor. They have turned molecular insights into diagnostic tools like MSK-IMPACT and MSK-ACCESS®. MSK-IMPACT, funded by this community, became the first FDA-approved genetic screening test of its kind and is now standard of care for every MSK patient.

Next-generation sequencing 
Today, the center’s Innovative Diagnostics Initiative is advancing MSK-TARGET™, a next-generation RNA test that offers even deeper insights into each person’s cancer. Recently approved by New York State for clinical validation, the test is being refined with RNA sequencing from thousands of patients — a step that could make it a future standard of care.

Transforming data into cures
$6 million

Every study funded by Cycle for Survival has a data component, and this year the community is helping to build a computational infrastructure that will ensure that MSK continues to lead the field of cancer data analysis — and the cancer research it makes possible — long into the future.
 

Why data science? 
Data science is the thread connecting all of today’s most innovative cancer research. It is especially integral to rare cancer research: The fact that there are fewer patients with each disease type makes data science even more essential to identifying biological patterns across different types of cancer to find new treatments and cures.

Leading the field 
MSK has long been ahead of the curve in data science. With support from Cycle for Survival, we’ve built one of the world’s richest collections of genomic, imaging, and clinical data — taken from more than 100,000 patients, including many with rare cancers. This unique resource helped MSK pioneer precision oncology. What was once an unproven idea is now the global standard of care, transforming outcomes for people with rare cancers.

Breakthroughs still ahead 
Today, only one-third of people with cancer benefit from precision medicine. To change that, MSK scientists must identify the genetic drivers of each cancer and match them with effective treatments. This requires advanced diagnostics like MSK-IMPACT, MSK-ACCESS, and MSK-TARGET™; years of rigorous research to develop safe therapies; and world-class data science to connect it all.

With modern computing and your support, our data scientists are working to ensure that people with rare cancers have the treatments they need, bringing us closer to a future where precision medicine works for everyone.

Equinox Innovation Initiative
$3.6 million

Named in honor of Cycle for Survival’s founding partner, Equinox, these grants are awarded to MSK physicians and scientists through a competitive internal application process. These coveted funds enable recipients to pursue bold, leading-edge original research with speed and agility.

2025 Recipients 

Yu Chen, MD, PhD 
Development of precision oncology therapies for bladder cancers with EP300 and CREBBP mutations

Kojo Elenitoba-Johnson, MD 
Identification and targeting of novel B cell receptor-GEF-H1 signaling axis in B cell lymphoma

Karuna Ganesh, MD, PhD <
Mechanism-informed therapeutics for appendiceal cancer peritoneal metastasis

Alexander Gitlin, MD, PhD 
Therapeutic targeting of the malignancy-promoting inflammatory state in VEXAS syndrome

Andrew Intlekofer, MD, PhD 
Enzyme hyperactivation for precision targeting of cancer metabolism

Paul Johannet, MD 
A Phase 2 Study of Durvalumab for Patients with Stage 1 or 2 (Occult) Mismatch Repair-Deficient Endometrial Cancer and a Strong Desire for Fertility Preservation

Monika Laszkowska, MD, MS 
Drivers of signet-ring cell carcinogenesis in hereditary diffuse gastric cancer

Luis Parada, PhD

Evaluating novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of NF1-associated MPNST

Richard Wong, MD 
Targeting innervation in adenoid cystic carcinoma