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MSKCC, one of the world's premier cancer centers, originated from New York Cancer Hospital, founded in 1884. Located on the Avenue, and built upon land donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Memorial Hospital (MH) was built in the late 1930s. In the 1940s, Alfred P. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, joined forces to establish the Sloan-Kettering Institute (SKI), to promote basic research related to cancer. In 1980, SKI and MH were brought under the umbrella of MSKCC, now renowned for its commitment to exceptional patient care, innovative cancer research and superb educational programs. One of 39 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, MSKCC has demonstrated its eminence by the close collaboration between physicians and scientists. In addition to providing patients with the best care available, it strives to discover more effective strategies to prevent, control, and ultimately, cure cancer. MSKCC specialists are leaders in innovative biomedical research and in translating the latest research to advance the standard of cancer diagnosis and treatment worldwide. For the past 40 years MSKCC has been the recipient of an NCI Cancer Center Support Grant that has provided crucial support for a rich array of shared facilities that provide crucial equipment and technical support for work conducted by the Center's investigators.
Since January 2000, Harold Varmus, MD, former Director of the National Institutes of Health and co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Memorial Hospital’s clinical facilities constitute an inpatient facility of 432 beds, an ambulatory care pavilion, and a complete blood bank and apheresis unit. Outpatient facilities include fully equipped Adult, Pediatric and Surgical Day Hospitals and a large Outpatient Clinic. Its state-of-the-art facilities house the world’s most advanced technology for outpatient cancer diagnosis and treatment, including radiation oncology treatment, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, pharmacy, and cancer-screening services and innovative programs in women’s health, psycho-oncology, cancer survivorship and integrative medicine. In the recent period, the Center’s diagnostic imaging programs have been greatly expanded with newly-renovated suites using the latest imaging modalities, such as PET-CT, MRI, fMRI as well as standard radiological screening methods. The Hospital’s programs for research and patient care are under the direction of Dr. Robert Wittes.
The Disease Management Program features 16 multidisciplinary cancer teams. Patients are treated by as many different specialists as are needed for their particular type of disease, including surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, psychiatrists, and nurses. These personnel are drawn from the Hospital’s 12 clinical departments, comprising 650 attending physicians, 1,383 registered nurses and approximately 5,000 support staff.
Sloan- Kettering Institute is where state-of-the-art basic science research flourishes side-by-side with clinical investigation and treatment at Memorial Hospital. The research staff includes 85 laboratory investigators, 365 research fellows and 140 graduate students. Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas J. Kelly, MD, PhD, the laboratory research enterprise is dedicated to elucidating the mechanisms and etiology of malignant disease through a number of programs: Cancer Biology & Genetics, Cell Biology, Computational Biology, Developmental Biology, Immunology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry, and Structural Biology.
With Sloan Kettering Institute’s research space needs outgrowing the original Kettering building, Rockefeller Research Laboratories were opened in 1989, adding 165,000 sq. ft. of research space to the portfolio. This building housed new animal facilities as well as new labs specializing in macromolecular structure using high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography.
In September 2006, a new research complex was opened, named in recognition of a $100 million gift from MSKCC Board member Mortimer B. Zuckerman. The Zuckerman Research Center’s 23-story building provides basic and translational scientists with an environment designed to promote multi-disciplinary translational research interactions. The building includes 16 floors of state-of-the-art laboratories to accommodate the Center's programs in immunology, molecular pharmacology and chemistry, and cancer biology and genetics. A second phase of construction is now underway to build a connecting seven-story structure; this will add a conference center with a 350-seat auditorium and a number of "dry" laboratories, including space for computational biology. When completed, the 693,000 sq. ft. complex will nearly double MSKCC’s research enterprise.
MSKCC has also recently established the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, a new PhD program that offers a distinctive course of study in cancer biology with a strong clinical orientation. The School will be housed in the new Zuckerman Research Center, ensuring a stimulating environment for the students, who will be working on the same floors as some of the top cancer researchers in the country. Under the leadership of Dr. Kenneth Marians, Dean of the Gerstner Graduate School, MSKCC was recently awarded a $1 million, four-year NIH training grant which will provide stipend support for five of the incoming graduate fellows.
Another inhabitant of the Zuckerman Research Center is the Center’s latest translational effort, the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP). HOPP will enable MSKCC to continue to enlarge its ranks of translational investigators and enhance programs in areas of clinical importance. It is a major hospital-based initiative in which scientists and physicians aim to translate laboratory findings into novel approaches to cancer detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. HOPP is under the leadership of Dr. Charles Sawyers, who came to MSKCC from UCLA. A leader in the field of prostate cancer, he has also been instrumental in the development of two new FDA-approved drugs for leukemia. The HOPP is anticipated to grow to some 20 principal investigators, who will seek to translate basic scientific discoveries directly into innovations in patient care.
