MD Anderson is the largest cancer centre in the world by patient volume, with the biggest phase 1 programme and a leading CAR-NK effort.
MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, part of the University of Texas and founded in 1941, is the largest cancer centre in the world by patient volume and holds NCI comprehensive designation and second place in the Newsweek/Statista oncology ranking. It runs the biggest early-phase trial unit anywhere, the Moon Shots programme, a proton therapy centre and a leading CAR-NK effort with Takeda, and its breast group under Symmans defined the Residual Cancer Burden index used to grade response after neoadjuvant treatment. OnCo links it to LACC in cervical cancer and the ROAR anaplastic thyroid cohort, to work on the gut microbiome and dietary fibre in immunotherapy response, and to pathways from cancer neuroscience to cachexia. Whether its scale translates into faster answers than smaller centres remains a fair question. The people listed here show who leads which programme.
From OpenAlex, oncology works in the last five years (2022 to 2026, current year in progress); counted on 2026-09-24.
Matched to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, including child institutions. 6,742 works · 95,559 citations · 62% open access · 15% clinical trials · 2% reviews.
Albert Koong is a radiation oncologist leading MD Anderson's radiation department, with a focus on pancreatic cancer and SBRT.
Anirban Maitra is a pancreatic cancer pathologist working on catching the disease early and understanding its precursors.
Urologist who set the definitions for BCG-unresponsive bladder cancer and leads the International Bladder Cancer Group.
Christopher Flowers is a lymphoma specialist who leads MD Anderson's entire medical oncology division.
Led VIALE-A, which made venetoclax plus azacitidine the standard for older patients with acute myeloid leukaemia.
Treated for prostate cancer from 1992, he gave MIT $100 million in 2007 to build an institute that puts engineers and cancer biologists under one roof, and MSK $150 million in 2015 for a new outpatient cancer building.
Houston gynaecologic oncologist who defined low-grade serous ovarian cancer as a distinct disease and led GOG 281, the trial that showed the MEK inhibitor trametinib works better than standard treatments for it.
Leads one of the largest breast medical oncology departments, and led the ribociclib trial in premenopausal women.
Leukaemia specialist who built chemotherapy-light regimens combining inotuzumab, blinatumomab and ponatinib for adult ALL.
With Emil Freireich he showed that combinations of drugs could cure childhood leukaemia, then extended the idea to Hodgkin lymphoma and to adjuvant treatment after surgery.
At the NCI in the early 1960s he and Emil Frei gave children four drugs at once, VAMP, against fierce opposition, and turned a leukaemia almost no child survived into a curable one. He also worked out platelet transfusion.
Houston oncologist who led the trial that established belzutifan, the first drug for the tumours of von Hippel-Lindau disease, including kidney cancers, pancreatic tumours and haemangioblastomas.
Led CodeBreaK 100, the trial that made sotorasib the first approved KRAS inhibitor, and showed STK11/KEAP1 co-mutations blunt immunotherapy.
Funda Meric-Bernstam runs the world's largest phase 1 programme and led the tumour-agnostic HER2 ADC study.
Breast oncologist who led MONALEESA-2, the first CDK4/6 trial to show an overall survival gain in first-line HR-positive disease.
First author of the revumenib trial that created the menin inhibitor class for acute leukaemia.
MD Anderson's chief scientist, a cell-cycle biologist who ran drug discovery in industry before leading the centre's research.
Hagop Kantarjian is one of the most prolific leukaemia investigators alive, and helped bring more than a dozen leukaemia drugs to approval.
Led RELATIVITY-047, which made relatlimab the first approved LAG-3 inhibitor, and the trial that showed immunotherapy works in melanoma brain metastases.
Gastro-oesophageal oncologist who co-led CheckMate 649, the trial that added nivolumab to first-line gastric cancer chemotherapy.
Led the RADIANT trials that made everolimus a standard therapy for pancreatic and other neuroendocrine tumours.
Discovered that blocking CTLA-4 unleashes T cells against cancer, the work behind ipilimumab and the 2018 Nobel Prize.
Leukaemia specialist who was lead author of RESONATE-2, the trial that made ibrutinib a first-line treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in older patients.
Led the ZUMA-7 overall survival analysis that made CAR-T the standard second-line therapy for early-relapsing lymphoma.
Houston surgeon who chaired the melanoma expert panel for the eighth edition of the AJCC staging system, the classification doctors use to describe how far a melanoma has spread.
Surgeon-scientist who showed the gut microbiome shapes response to immunotherapy and led early neoadjuvant melanoma trials.
Jennifer Litton led the EMBRACA trial that brought talazoparib to BRCA-mutated breast cancer.
Led the trials comparing stereotactic radiotherapy with surgery for operable early lung cancer.
Lung cancer leader behind trials that changed treatment of EGFR-mutant and stage III disease.
Created cord blood-derived CAR-NK cells, the first off-the-shelf CAR cell therapy to show remissions in lymphoma.
Physician-scientist who is Executive Director of the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio, the only NCI-designated cancer centre in South Texas.
Turned anaplastic thyroid cancer, once measured in months, into a treatable disease with BRAF-targeted therapy and neoadjuvant strategies.
Mariana Chavez-MacGregor is a breast oncologist who studies how care is delivered and leads SWOG's international work.
Established that HPV causes a distinct, better-prognosis form of throat cancer and led RTOG 1016 on how to treat it.
Led the ibrutinib and brexucabtagene autoleucel trials that transformed mantle cell lymphoma treatment.
Houston dermatologist who led the trials that established cemiplimab, the first drug approved for advanced cutaneous squamous-cell carcinoma, and sonidegib for basal cell carcinoma.
He never saw the hospital: his foundation, left $19 million on his death in 1939, matched the State of Texas's $500,000 in 1941 on condition the new cancer hospital be built in Houston and carry his name.
Breast cancer physician-scientist who directs the University of Hawai'i Cancer Center, the NCI-designated cancer centre in Honolulu.
Houston surgeon who led the trial showing that giving cemiplimab before surgery can eliminate cutaneous squamous-cell carcinoma in about half of patients, sparing many from extensive operations.
Runs the platform that studies patients' tumours before and after immunotherapy to learn why checkpoint drugs work or fail.
Peter Pisters is the surgeon who has run the world's largest cancer centre since 2017.
Houston breast cancer doctor who was lead author of HER2CLIMB, the trial that established tucatinib for HER2-positive breast cancer, including in patients with brain metastases.
Led ZUMA-1, the trial that made axicabtagene ciloleucel the first CAR-T therapy approved for lymphoma.
Led BEACON and BREAKWATER, the trials that gave BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer its first targeted therapies.
In 2016 he founded and funded an institute that runs cancer immunotherapy research as one network across a dozen leading cancer centres, sharing data, samples and patents rather than competing for them.
Houston gynaecologic oncologist who led DUO-E, the trial that added durvalumab, with or without olaparib, to first-line chemotherapy for advanced endometrial cancer.
Led CheckMate 77T, one of the perioperative immunotherapy trials that changed how operable lung cancer is treated.
Led CAPTIVATE, which established fixed-duration ibrutinib plus venetoclax as a first-line option for CLL.
Patients with newly diagnosed metastatic colorectal cancer whose tumour carries a BRAF V600E mutation, which is about 8-12% of cases, should now be offered encorafenib and cetuximab together with FOLFOX from the start rather than after chemotherapy fails; median survival has roughly doubled to about two and a half years. BRAF testing at diagnosis is therefore essential, alongside RAS and mismatch repair testing. The regimen is more toxic than chemotherapy alone.
Evidence that the immune environment of gallbladder cancer differs by population even when the mutations do not; a reason to report gallbladder cancer and its regions separately in immunotherapy trials rather than as one biliary subgroup.
Revumenib proved that a transcriptional dependency, rather than a kinase, can be drugged in leukaemia, opening treatment for two genetic subgroups that together cover roughly a third of AML plus most infant ALL. It is now approved and is being combined with venetoclax-azacitidine and intensive chemotherapy in front-line trials. Single-agent remissions are often short without transplant.
It corrected a widely repeated simplification. An STK11 or KEAP1 mutation is not by itself a reason to expect immunotherapy to fail; it is a reason to expect it in a KRAS-mutant tumour, which is how the result should be read on a report.
Patients with newly diagnosed advanced melanoma have a dual-checkpoint option that improves on nivolumab alone with only a modest increase in serious side effects, making it attractive for those unable to tolerate or unwilling to risk the toxicity of ipilimumab. It did not prove superior survival, and it has not been compared with nivolumab plus ipilimumab, which remains preferred for patients with brain metastases or other high-risk features. LAG-3 is now an established target under study in many other cancers.
Fixes the window in which a blood test could plausibly work and shows why CA 19-9 alone is not enough: half of early cases are missed even at diagnosis, and Lewis-negative patients are missed entirely.
It offers the first credible explanation for why only a minority of small-cell patients get a durable benefit from checkpoint blockade, and it introduces subtype switching, which would mean retesting at relapse rather than typing once.
VIALE-A turned a palliative regimen into one that produces remission in two-thirds of older AML patients and is now the reference treatment for anyone not fit for intensive chemotherapy. It shifted the field towards lower-intensity targeted combinations and opened the door to adding FLT3, IDH and menin inhibitors to the backbone. Cure remains uncommon and most patients relapse within two years.
Shares Newsweek/Statista World's Best Specialized Hospitals: Oncology, Break Through Cancer, Cut the nerve supply to tumours with old drugs, David H. Koch.
Shares Break Through Cancer, The V Foundation for Cancer Research, Emil "Tom" Frei III, National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).
Shares Gemcitabine, cisplatin and nab-paclitaxel phase 2 (MD Anderson and Mayo), Hitachi (particle therapy), Non-V600 BRAF mutations define a clinically distinct molecular subtype of metastatic colorectal cancer, Gamma Knife.
Open-source projects that this organisation maintains, from OnCo's own catalogue: licence and last activity as the repository reported them on the day of the fetch. Listing is not endorsement; check the licence before reuse and the validation before clinical use.
Copy-number karyotyping of tumour cells from single-cell RNA-seq, from the Navin lab at MD Anderson.
Calls germline and somatic variants from single-cell sequencing data to trace clonal lineages, from MD Anderson.