Frequently asked questions

Damon Runyon is the best-kept secret in cancer research. While we’re well-known in the scientific community for our rigorous selection processes and prestigious awards identifying the next generation of leaders in cancer research, we do not have the name recognition among the general public that larger organizations with broader missions and bigger marketing budgets have. 

Our mission is laser-focused: we push cancer science forward by providing tactical financial support to young scientists when they need it most to explore ideas that are too risky to be funded by conventional means. We don’t restrict our funding by cancer type, and we fund very broadly, from basic bench science all the way to clinical trials, because the history of cancer research shows us that remarkable breakthroughs come from unexpected places.
 

Because biology doesn’t adhere to the categories we use in talking about cancer. For instance, one patient’s breast cancer may have much more in common genetically with another patient’s ovarian cancer than other cases of breast cancer driven by different oncogenes. Breaking down arbitrary silos and funding the boldest ideas across the spectrum of cancer research, from bench to bedside, is by far the most effective way to approach cancer research and advance our ability to treat all cancers.
 

The data is clear that scientists are at their most productive in the earliest years of their career: the average age at which a Nobel laureate conducted their award-winning work is 36. But senior scientists receive the vast majority of cancer research funding, so young investigators are left without support at exactly the time they are likeliest to come up with their most impactful ideas. That’s why we give them what they need most, when they need it most: the freedom and financial support to break out of existing paradigms.
 

Risky ideas have a higher chance of failure than research projects designed to take incremental steps forward, and that’s exactly why they’re some of the most important to fund. Many ideas first supported by Damon Runyon, like CRISPR and immunotherapy, were thought of as nothing short of crazy at the time – but hindsight has demonstrated how important it was to fund those crazy ideas.

Because basic science is the foundation of every breakthrough in cancer research. If we only funded research that had an obvious connection to cancer, we would have missed out on some of the greatest breakthroughs in the field. The discovery of cancer-causing viruses, oncogenes, and the immune system’s ability to fight cancer all began as fundamental questions with no obvious clinical application. By investing in this early-stage work, Damon Runyon helps uncover the mechanisms that drive cancer initiation and progression—for only then can treatments interrupt them.
 

Damon Runyon provides less than 0.3% of the annual cancer research funding budget in the U.S., yet our scientists have contributed to every major breakthrough in cancer in in the past 75+ years. We may not be a household name, but we have had an outsized impact on cancer.