For information on clinical trials at this NCCN Member Institution click here.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is the world's oldest and largest private institution devoted to patient care, research, and education in cancer. The Center's mission—the progressive control and cure of cancer—places it at the forefront of scientific research, as well as the development of innovative cancer therapies and new patient care paradigms.

• The physicians and scientists at MSKCC are well known for their expertise in cancer treatment and research, particularly in the areas of complex oncologic surgery, 3-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, chemotherapy (particularly in the development of new agents), and bone marrow transplantation (both allogeneic and autologous).
• MSKCC has more than 800 scientists and physicians who receive more than $100 million in research grants annually. Each year, the Center supports 20,000 hospital admissions, 430,000 outpatient visits, and more than 100,000radiation treatments.
• MSKCC is one of the first centers in the world to dedicate staff to the treatment of cancer pain. Pain experts at Memorial Sloan-Kettering have pioneered the use of new drugs and methods of drug delivery using both anesthetic and neurological approaches.
• The Cancer Prevention and Wellness Program offers screening and counseling services for early detection and prevention of cancer. Screening is offered for breast, cervical, prostate, colorectal, and skin cancers. Other programs focus on smoking-cessation, nutrition, and stress management. In addition, MSKCC offers a range of services for persons at higher risk for specific cancers, including genetic counseling and testing.
• A network of regional sites staffed by MSKCC physicians and other professionals provides convenient access to patients in Long Island, Northern New Jersey, and Westchester County. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other services are available at these locations.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Adult Oncology Services

Introduction

Memorial Sloan-Kettering is the oldest and largest cancer center in the world. Composed of Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and the Sloan-Kettering Institute, it is dedicated to excellence in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through patient care, research, and education.

Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases provides patient care. Early detection, precise diagnosis, individually tailored treatment, and concern for a patient's needs are the hallmarks of the care provided.

• Memorial has long been a leader for cancer surgery. Its surgeons developed many of the methods that are commonly used to treat cancer today.
• Memorial’s doctors have developed new chemotherapy drugs and have pioneered ways to make chemotherapy safer and more effective.
• Its staff uses the most advanced technologies to target radiotherapy precisely to tumor sites, making treatment as effective as possible while protecting healthy tissue.
• The hospital’s experts work together to provide multimodality therapy, meaning that, if necessary, we will treat your cancer with the ideal combination of therapies.
• Memorial was the first to establish a psychiatry service to help cancer patients and their families.
• Memorial was also the first to establish a service focused on alleviating cancer pain, as well as a genetic counseling service.

General Information

Treatment

Stem Cell Transplant Program

The following are treated using autologous, allogeneic, or cord blood stem cell transplants:

• Acute Leukemias
• Chronic Leukemia
• Congenital Disorders of Hematopoiesis and Immunity
• Aplastic Anemia
• Myelodysplastic Syndromes
• Myelofibrosis
• Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
• Refractory Hodgkin's Disease
• Thalassemia, Sickle Cell Anemia, and other Hemoglobin Disorders
• Germ Cell Tumors
• Hodgkin's Disease
• Multiple Myeloma
• Solid Tumors

Alternative/Complementary Medicine

The Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center complements mainstream medical care and addresses the emotional, social, and spiritual needs of patients and families. The Service includes inpatient and outpatient clinical care, as well as research, education, and training.

In addition, this Service provides unique access to otherwise unavailable information about over-the-counter products and their impact in the context of cancer care via our About Herbs database available at:www.mskcc.org/aboutherbs.

Individual therapies include:

• Touch Therapies: Reflexology, Shiatsu Massage, Swedish Massage, Aromatherapy Massage
• Mind-Body Therapies: Meditation, Reiki, Polarity Bodywork, Hypnotherapy
• Creative Therapies: Music Therapy, Sound Therapy
• Acupuncture
• Nutritional and Herbal Counseling
• Frequent workshops and lectures are available to patients, their families, and members of the community
  

Clinical Trials

Continually updated clinical trial information can be found at:www.mskcc.org/clinicaltrials.

Patients may call 800.525.2225 for further information and to schedule appointments.

Late Effects Clinic

For more information about the program, or to make an appointment, patients can call the Long-Term Follow-Up Program at 212.639.8138

Cancer Prevention and Screening

Our Cancer Prevention and Wellness Program is a comprehensive program designed for anyone interested in cancer prevention and well-being. We offer one-on-one consultation with a Wellness Specialist, who will discuss a patient's health, family history, and lifestyle, and then work with a patient to design a personal program tailored to your specific needs. This program includes referral to screening services, smoking cessation, and nutrition counseling. For appointments, patients can call 888.MSK.WELL. For further information, visit our web site at: www.mskcc.org/wellness.

Smoking Cessation

We offer smoking cessation programs for those who have cancer, as well as for those who never did, through the Cancer Prevention and Wellness Program. They can be reached at 888.MSK.WELL.

Our Counseling Center offers a smoking cessation program for cancer patients. They can be reached at 212.610.0507.

Our web site, www.mskcc.org/smokingcessation, provides smoking cessation tips and a lung cancer risk assessment calculator for smokers and ex-smokers over the age of 50.

Screening

Be SMART! provides mobile breast cancer screening services for corporations, churches, and community groups in the New York metropolitan area.
Our Breast Examination Center of Harlem provides free breast cancer screening, including free mammograms, as well as free pelvic exams and pap smears. This Center also provides follow-up and education.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Guttman Diagnostic Center provides breast cancer screening, and offers both women and men prevention and early detection services for gynecologic, prostate, and skin cancers.

Throughout the year we provide free PSA, Head & Neck, and Skin Cancer screenings. Our Cancer Prevention and Wellness program hosts free cooking demonstrations.

Support Services

Memorial Sloan-Kettering offers survivorship and support services throughout the continuum of care.

Our Counseling Center and Psychiatry Service offer individual, family, and group counseling for both outpatients and inpatients and their families. Specialized programs include art and music therapy. This Center also offers bereavement groups.

In addition, a social worker is assigned to each patient floor and is available to patients, their families, and friends for help in dealing with the problems associated with a cancer diagnosis. Social workers provide counseling on adapting to serious illness, help communicating with family and friends—including young children—and offer assistance with the impact of illness on employment.

Social workers also have information about community-based programs that assist with practical needs such as transportation for treatment and home-care costs.

For patients who have completed treatment, our Post-Treatment Resources Program provides individual, family, and group counseling services, seminars and workshops, a telephone information helpline, and a lending/reference library. This program also helps patients with practical issues surrounding employment, insurance, quality of life, family life, etc.

Supportive Care

Pain Service
The Pain and Palliative Care Service can be reached through Physician Referral Service at
800.525.2225. Services are for Memorial Sloan-Kettering patients only.

Home Care/Hospice Service
Our Social Work Department provides referral to home care and hospice services. We do not operate such facilities/services.

Nutrition Service
A Clinical Nutrition Service is available.

Rehabilitation Service
Rehabilitation Service is also available.

Cooperative Group Membership

Clinical and Research Efforts

Dynamic collaborations among our basic researchers and clinicians, coupled with powerful new technologies, allow us to advance the biological understanding of cancer and to seek strategies to prevent, control, and hopefully cure cancer in the future.

Adult Oncology Program

For the year 2005—Number of oncologists includes all hospital attending staff: surgical oncologists, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, neuro-oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, psycho-oncologists, and anesthesiologists, all of whom only treat cancer.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Pediatric Oncology Services

Introduction

At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, some of the most experienced pediatric oncology staff in the world are prepared to address all forms of childhood cancer and to provide the type of support that maximizes a child’s chances for cure. These pediatric oncologists have made many crucial discoveries in the treatment of childhood cancer, and have pioneered in the development of strikingly more effective chemotherapy regimens for several of these malignancies. The combined expertise and close interaction among pediatric oncologists, surgeons, radiation oncologists, and other subspecialists on the pediatrics team provide a unique multidisciplinary approach. This not only improves the child’s chances of cure, but also minimizes the potentially harmful effects of cancer and the treatments required to eradicate it on a child’s general health, growth, and development, so that the child and his or her family can return to a normal life once treatment is completed.

Pediatric oncologists have expertise in the management of all childhood cancers and are world-renowned experts in the areas listed below.

General Information

Clinical and Research Information

Research Efforts

The program of clinical and laboratory research in Pediatric Oncology is focused on a number of vital issues in the treatment of pediatric malignancies. Research studies are being conducted in the following areas:

• Characterization of the molecular genetic, immunophenotypic, and pharmacologic features of childhood malignancies that predict their growth, metastatic potential, and responsiveness to treatment;
• The development and critical evaluation of novel dose-intensive, alkylator-based regimens for curative treatment of developmental tumors of childhood;
• Preclinical evaluation and clinical assessment of tumor-targeted therapies; and
• Analysis of in vitro and in vivo activities of biologics on cancer cells and cellular systems contributing to tumor resistance.

The dominant theme of the Bone Marrow Transplantation biology research program has been the pursuit of effective strategies for the transplantation of patients lacking an HLA-matched sibling donor. Memorial has introduced the use of HLA-haplotype disparate T-cell–depleted marrow transplants for the treatment of children with SCID lacking a donor, an approach which, at our own and many other centers, has led to long-term survival with immunologic reconstitution and without GvHD for over 70 percent of patients transplanted. A major accomplishment of our program over the last eight years has been the definition of the biological factors contributing to graft failures complicating transplants of T-cell–depleted HLA-matched or HLA-disparate marrow in patients with leukemia.

Special Expertise

Acute Leukemias & Lymphomas
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is a world leader in the treatment of acute leukemias and lymphomas. Treatment regimens developed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are now the standard for high-risk forms of leukemia, achieving cure rates now approaching over 80 percent. Also, the Center performs allogeneic bone marrow transplants for early relapsed and 2+ remission. Additionally, Adoptive Cell Therapy with Immune T-cell treatment is used.

Bone Marrow Transplants
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center performs bone marrow transplants and peripheral blood stem cell transplants following high dose chemotherapy. Transplants may use cord blood, or be HLA, A, B, D disparate, T-cell–depleted related, or unrelated unmodified and T-cell–depleted. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center pioneered techniques for modifying a marrow graft so as to permit transplantation in children using blood-forming cells from their normal half-matched parents.

Brain tumors
Brain tumors are treated in two ways: 1) novel dose-intensive regimen with autologous peripheral stem cell rescue, and 2) chemotherapy regimes for germ cell tumors that do not require radiation.

Ewing’s Sarcoma/PNET
Treatments include: 1) improved dose-intensive chemotherapy regimes for high-risk disease, and 2) autologous PBSC transplants post-myeloablation for metastatic and relapsed disease.

Late Effects
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has developed a team of physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, neuro-psychologists, and social workers who have special expertise and experience dealing with the long-term consequences of cancer and its treatment in children. They have developed special programs to maximize each child’s normal growth and development after completion of treatment, to prevent or treat medical problems that may arise long after therapy, and to maximize a child’s adjustment and success in school, at work or play, and with the family at home.

Neuroblastoma
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center offers improved dose-intensive chemotherapy with adjunctive use of 131 GD-2 specific antibodies for treatment of stage IV disease.

Osteogenic Sarcoma
Special treatment of osteogenic sarcomas includes high-dose chemotherapy with limb-sparing surgery. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center pioneered the development of advanced surgical techniques, including limb-sparing surgery, which have not only improved long-term prognosis but also maximized the child’s chances for a normally functional life.

Retinoblastoma
Treatment involves a chemotherapy and laser surgery regimen, which bypasses the need for radiation.

Statistics

Percent of children treated in each age range

Pediatric Oncology Program, 2002

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Genetic Counseling and Testing Service

Because of the hereditary nature of a significant proportion of common cancers, genetic counseling and testing options are now viewed as an important part of oncologic care at specialty centers such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). The Clinical Genetics Service in the Department of Medicine MSKCC offers genetic counseling, diagnostic referrals, and education regarding cancer risk to individuals and to families. The service is staffed by physicians specialized in cancer genetics and genetic counselors. As a part of a multidisciplinary approach to genetic counseling, families also have access to the services of nutritionists, psychiatrists, and social workers. Individualized guidelines for cancer-screening programs appropriate for a particular person's level of risk are provided by this service.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering provides a full range of genetic counseling, testing, screening, and research. The following sets out the components of the comprehensive genetic testing program. 

Intake Process

Testing

Post-Test Counseling and Follow-Up

Research

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is a leader in genetic research and encourages clients to participate in the various types of research. For example, the center has a research interest in hereditary hematologic cancers, and has a number of peer-reviewed research studies that provide genetic testing at no cost to individuals who qualify for these protocols.

Other Components of Genetic Services

Last updated: 2/20/2008