Geoffrey Beene

The GEOFFREY BEENE CANCER RESEARCH CENTER AT MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER was established in 2006. The total value of combined donations to date from Geoffrey Beene exceed $106,000,000.

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.

"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, President of MSKCC. "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.

Nine research grants were funded in the first year of the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center. In 2008, an additional ten research grants were funded, as well as three proposals for shared resources. In 2009, thirteen research grants, as well as one proposal for shared resources, were funded for research issues which span from finding curative treatments for metastatic brain cancers to improving quantitative PET imaging of breast tumors, early detection, staging and monitoring of immunotherapy, to identifying genetic mutation "signatures" that could be used by physicians and patients to determine whether or not a patient is at high risk of recurrence after surgery. This work is essential to understanding and finding a cure for the devastating plethora of cancers.

Since the inception of the Center, Johanna Joyce, PhD, and Andrea Ventura, MD/PhD, Assistant Members in the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, and Ross Levine, MD, Assistant Member in the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, have been appointed Geoffrey Beene Junior Faculty Chairs. 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 we are proud to announce three Geoffrey Beene Graduate Fellowships, PhD students: Neha Bhagwat, John Holliday, and Ellen Hukkelhoven.

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