Geoffrey Beene

The GEOFFREY BEENE CANCER RESEARCH CENTER AT MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER was established in 2006. The total value in combined funding to date from Geoffrey Beene exceeds $120,000,000.

G. Thompson Hutton, the Trustee of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation and President of Geoffrey Beene, LLC, has orchestrated the activities to build and support this ambitious research initiative. "The hallmark of the GEOFFREY BEENE CANCER RESEARCH CENTER AT MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER is its focus on revolutionary new research approaches across a variety of cancers, strategies that will lead to prevention through improved diagnostics and enhanced quality of life treatments toward the ultimate goal of making cancer a more manageable and perhaps one day, a curable disease."

Since its creation, the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center has served as the focal point for an array of projects, aimed at translating works at the cellular level into revolutionary new research approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating the disease. It brings together researchers and physicians from two complementary areas: the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, based in the Sloan-Kettering Institute (SKI), which studies the genetic and biochemical events that trigger the transformation of normal cells into cancerous ones, and the Memorial Hospital-based Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, which pursues new insights into the molecular mechanisms of cancer from the perspective of clinical oncology.

Read the 2010 Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center Progress Report.

"The Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center has helped galvanize our efforts to gain new insights into cancer and to apply that knowledge to the development of more effective strategies for patient care," said Harold Varmus, former President of MSKCC, and now Director of the National Cancer Institute. "We are especially grateful to Tom Hutton and his colleagues at Geoffrey Beene, LLC for recognizing the significance of the work being done here."

The funds from Geoffrey Beene support advanced new research initiatives spanning the entire range of translational research, funding core research labs, research projects, the establishment of senior and junior faculty chairs, graduate fellowships, the annual Geoffrey Beene Symposium, and the annual Geoffrey Beene Research Retreat.

The Center provides support for the Geoffrey Beene Translational Oncology Core, directed by Dr. Charles Sawyers. The core performs genomic analyses of clinical material by applying state of the art genome-scale molecular profiling technologies. Geoffrey Beene salutes Dr. Sawyers for the extraordinary accomplishment of winning the prestigious 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. His award is based on the development of molecularly-targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia, converting a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition.

The Center also provides support for the Microchemistry and Proteomics Core Facility and Genomics Core Facility, both of which are aimed at significantly augmenting Memorial Sloan-Kettering's capacity for translational cancer research in genomics.

A total of 53 research grants and 7 proposals for shared resources, have been funded to-date, since the inception of the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center: nine in 2007; ten in 2008, and three proposals for shared resources; thirteen in 2009, and one proposal for shared resources; ten in 2010, and two proposals for shared resources; and eleven in 2011, and one proposal for shared resources. Each research grant funds initial stage research and is generally renewed for a second year for each project. This work is essential to understanding and finding a cure for the devastating plethora of cancers.

In 2011, Scott Lowe, PhD was appointed Geoffrey Beene Senior Chair, and Ping Chi was awarded a Junior Chair, joining Andrea Ventura, MD/PhD, Assistant Member in the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, (Junior Chair). Johanna Joyce, PhD and Ross Levine, MD, Assistant Members in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, are both former Geoffrey Beene Junior Faculty Chairs (first appointed in 2007). Hyung-Song Nam, an MD/PhD student, and Sindy Escobar-Alvarez, a PhD student, were named the first Geoffrey Beene graduate fellows in 2007. The second Geoffrey Beene Graduate Fellowships in 2008 were awarded to two PhD students, Vasilena Gocheva and Barry S. Taylor. In 2009, the third Geoffrey Beene Graduate Fellowships were awarded to three PhD students, Neha Bhagwat, John Holliday, and Ellen Hukkelhoven. In 2010, three Geoffrey Beene Graduate Fellowships were awarded to PhD students, Piero Sanfilippo, Daniel Marks and Oakley Olson. And we are proud to announce in 2011, three Geoffrey Beene Graduate Fellowships were awarded to PhD students Robert Bowman, Jenny Karo and Gregory Mazo.

Oversight of the GEOFFREY BEENE CANCER RESEARCH CENTER is provided by the following members of its Executive Committee: