Damon Runyon News

July 14, 2025

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named five new Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators. The recipients of this prestigious award are outstanding, early-career physician-scientists conducting patient-oriented cancer research at major research centers under the mentorship of the nation's leading scientists and clinicians.

July 11, 2025

Cancers caused by mutations in the RAS gene family—which include pancreatic, colorectal, lung, skin, and ovarian cancers, among others—have thwarted drug development efforts for decades. The RAS enzymes, KRAS, NRAS, and HRASact as molecular switches, turning “on” and “off” the cell’s ability to grow. When mutated, RAS proteins become stuck “on,” causing cells to proliferate uncontrollably. For 40 years, these mutants were considered “undruggable,” their surface too smooth for therapeutic molecules to bind.


July 9, 2025

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation held its Annual Breakfast at The Metropolitan Club in New York on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. The event raised over $1.1 million to support promising early-career scientists pursuing innovative strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat all forms of cancer.


June 17, 2025

Enteroendocrine cells, which line the wall of the gut, secrete hormones that regulate glucose levels, food intake, and stomach emptying. Abnormal activity of these cells can cause gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), as well as intestinal tumors.


June 16, 2025

Three exceptional young clinicians with novel approaches to fighting cancer have been named the 2025 recipients of the Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Award. This award, established to help bolster the ranks of this vital cohort of cancer researchers, provides physicians who have completed clinical specialty fellowship training with the opportunity to become leaders in translational and clinical research.

June 6, 2025

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation today announced the launch of the Innovative Ventures in Early-Stage Technologies (InVEST) Program. This unique initiative will automatically provide the first seed check to biotech startups founded by Damon Runyon alumni scientists.

May 29, 2025

Damon Runyon has announced a new  cohort of Quantitative Biology Fellows, five exceptional early-career scientists who are bringing cutting-edge computational tools to bear on some of the most important questions in cancer biology. Whether designing new proteins or mapping DNA structure, their projects aim to shed light on these fundamental questions through large-scale data collection, mathematical modeling, and quantitative analysis.

May 8, 2025

On Saturday, April 12, 2025, an intrepid team of scientific luminaries led by biotech journalist and mountaineer Luke Timmerman embarked upon the trip of a lifetime—a hike to Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Over the course of ten days, they covered more than forty miles of rugged, uneven terrain, bonded over card games and cups of tea, struggled through bouts of altitude sickness, and encouraged each other every day to keep going.

April 17, 2025

Kheewoong Baek, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been named this year’s Damon Runyon-Meghan E. Raveis Fellow. This award honors former Damon Runyon Board Member Meghan Raveis, who tragically passed in a car accident in 2023.


April 10, 2025

Translocation renal cell carcinoma (tRCC) is a type of kidney cancer that arises when a gene called TFE3 on the X chromosome fuses with another gene on either the X chromosome or an autosome, as non-sex chromosomes are called. Unlike most kidney cancers, tRCC occurs mainly in female individuals, though why this is the case has never been clear. Now, a new study from Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator Srinivas R.