MSK has been ranked #2 for 2015-2016 by the U.S. News and World Report for Best Cancer Hospitals, behind MD Anderson Cancer Center. Out of 100, MSK received an overall score of 97.9.

A New York Times Health series on immunotherapy has featured several prominent MSK researchers and highlighted some of the innovative therapies being developed here: 

• Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer details the development of new mass-produced immunotherapy drugs called Checkpoint Inhibitors, that fight cancer by blocking a mechanism that the cancer uses to shut down the immune system. One such patient who has benefited from this therapy is Mr. Steve Cara, a patient of Dr. Matthew Hellmann, a medical oncologist who specializes in lung cancer at MSK. His stage 4 NSCLC is now in remission, after the immunotherapy shrunk his tumors small enough that they were operable. And when surgeons took out part of his right lung this spring, they discovered the cancer was actually gone. “No cancer was seen in any of the tissue they took out,” Dr. Hellmann said. “‘One hundred percent treatment effect,’” he read from the pathology report. “It was pretty cool.”
• Setting the Body’s ‘Serial Killers’ Loose on Cancer discusses the novel treatment cell therapy, which uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. Dr. Michael Sadelain, and immunologist, and the Director of the Center for Cell Engineering at MSK, is one of the pioneers of this breakthrough research involving genetically engineering the patient’s T-cells to recognize and destroy cancer, and then put them back into their bloodstream to multiply. “I call it a Frankenstein-like molecule,” said Dr. Renier J. Brentjens, the director of cellular therapeutics at MSK.

Memorial Sloan Kettering society presents Dr. Richard O’Reilly, the former Chair of Pediatrics at MSK and pioneer in the development in bone marrow transplants for patients without HLA match siblings, with the inaugural “Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Prize“.

MSK is testing wearable apps in a small cancer trial of 40 multiple myleoma patients. By tracking their sleep and activity and answering survey questions about quality of life, researchers are hoping to be able to provide better pain management since sleep and activity are correlated to self-reported pain levels.

Cancer survivor Mary Elizabeth Williams, a writer for Salon.com, was critical in Dr. Jedd Wolchok‘s, Chief of Melanoma and Immunotherapeutics as MSK, research into immunotherapy. Five years ago Williams was diagnosed with stage 4 Melanoma. After immunotherapy treatment she was found to be cancer free in November 2013.  “Without courageous volunteers like her we would never make progress,” said Wolchok. But he also said it’s not a “cure-all” and will not always work for everyone with the same diagnosis.