Welcome From the Director of the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center

Perhaps most prominent is our new name: Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center, spurred by our new National Cancer Institute designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center. This honor is a testament to the dedication of our entire team—physicians, nurses, researchers, other specialists, and patients—who made it possible, and I am committed to ensuring that we continue to deliver excellence in patient care and research to live up to the designation.

From our beginnings as The Tisch Cancer Institute in 2008 to our current standing, we have made significant progress and forged innovative pathways in deciphering and tackling cancer. This year’s Specialty Report features key developments, and we invite you to read about them in detail.

For example, our cancer scientists continue to advance our ability to understand, treat, prevent, and even cure the disease. Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, has been working on a personalized genomic cancer vaccine, PGV001, which has shown promise in phase 1 trials for multiple myeloma and solid tumors.

In close collaboration with other institutional partners, James Manfredi, PhD, has been unveiling the oncogenic properties of mutant p53 proteins in an NIH-funded study, shining a light on tumor suppression pathways that could potentially be targeted therapeutically.

We are harnessing the power of machine learning with enthusiasm and expertise, and have published several studies on leveraging AI, for example, with CT scans for early lung cancer detection (led by Claudia Henschke, PhD, MD) and for predicting EGFR mutations in lung cancer (led by Gabriele Campanella, PhD).

These developments and more are included in this year’s report.

Also during the year, we welcomed new clinical faculty, specifically growing our team of genitourinary specialists. These young, enthusiastic doctors bring expertise in clinical trials and cancer biology along with tremendous passion for patient care.

We secured impressive grant funding during the year to support innovative research, and we joined colleagues throughout the world in sharing research findings and collaborating on projects that are charting novel treatment strategies.

Our reputation as a cancer center continues to steadily grow. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 6 in Cancer in the nation, in 2025-2026, by U.S. News & World Report®. This achievement is possible thanks to the recognition of our colleagues, peers, and patients. We are proud of our accomplishments and aim to chart further progress in the coming year.