Scott Stuart, MSK Board Chair, and Dr. Selwyn Vickers, MD, FACS, MSK President and CEO
The year 2024 will be remembered for the bold and strategic course we set to fulfill our mission of ending cancer for life. The need to plan for the future is urgent, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts the number of people with cancer is expected to increase by 50% by 2050. At the same time, there is unprecedented hope and opportunity in the understanding and treatment of cancer.
To continue our global leadership in the field, we have prioritized six strategic initiatives:
- Innovate Clinical Strategy by expanding our capacity in many ways. We’ve achieved significant progress toward our goal to complete The Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion at MSK in 2030. Our regional locations continue to create new ways to increase access and deliver an exceptional patient experience.
- Drive Scientific Discovery by answering fundamental questions of biology that lay the groundwork for the cancer treatments of tomorrow. Across MSK, there are teams of scientists driven to discover, using advanced technology and new tools in cancer engineering.
- Harness the Immune System to boost the body’s innate power to fight cancer, a field that MSK pioneered, which has become among the most promising treatments in cancer therapy.
- Expand Precision Oncology to tailor a patient’s cancer treatment to the molecular and genetic characteristics of their disease, an approach that MSK helped introduce to the world.
- Transform Data Into Cures through MSK’s unique capability to analyze the vast amount of information gathered by treating hundreds of thousands of people and finding insights that continuously advance patient care.
- Develop the Next Generation of Leaders through innovative educational and training programs that create exceptionally skilled physicians, scientists, and other professionals who bring the MSK standard of excellence to the world.
To support these initiatives, 2024 marked the launch of The MSK Campaign: Leading Science. Changing Lives. The goal of this philanthropic campaign, perhaps the most important in MSK’s 140-year history, is to ensure that MSK doctors and scientists will have the resources they need to develop new treatments and cures, turning a legacy of innovation into impact.
In this report, you’ll see how this is happening every day at MSK, including:
- Advances in genetic testing, such as MSK-IMPACT®, that have helped patients like jazz pianist Michael Wolff overcome an extremely rare cancer.
- New insights into the secrets of metastatic cancer cells, which can change their identity to evade therapies.
- Accelerated development of vaccines to treat cancer with a patient’s own immune system, with the help of the newly launched Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at MSK.
- Important advances in the treatment of lung cancer that have helped patients like Jen Cosgrove, who was diagnosed with stage 4 disease in her 30s.
At MSK, we focus on not only a patient’s cancer diagnosis but also on what matters most to them.
- For Staten Island teenager Cody Bass, that meant helping him return to championship-winning form in bowling after becoming the first pediatric patient with a rare metastatic cancer to take a medication that targets a tumor’s mutation.
- For Dana Vergara, that meant fulfilling her dream of giving birth following rectal cancer, thanks to leading-edge surgery at MSK.
For us, it’s personal. When MSK’s Shakima Grant talks to people about the future Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion at MSK, she remembers her grandmother’s experience getting cancer care in New York. For Margaret Bediones, being a nurse at the MSK Ralph Lauren Center in Harlem fulfills a promise she made to herself to help people — at just 12 years old — when her father passed away from cancer.
The MSK community also includes the family and friends of our patients, who contribute to our mission through events like Cycle for Survival. This report shares the touching love story of two people grieving the loss of their spouses, who found each other and are forging a new path forward.
As we create the future of cancer care, guided by our strategic initiatives and supported by the generosity of the MSK Giving Community, we thank you for your partnership. Because of you, the greatest minds and the most compassionate people are able to give their all to reimagine what is possible. Be assured, our determination is unstoppable.