Sloan-Kettering Institute For Cancer Research

Sloan-Kettering Institute For Cancer Research, a nonprofit tax-exempt research organization and subsidiary of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center headquartered in New York, New York, operates as a prime recipient of federal research grants and a subcontractor to larger academic and government research consortia, conducting basic and translational cancer research, biomedical science, and clinical trials funded primarily through the National Cancer Institute and other federal agencies.

The Institute's federal footprint is dominated by NIH grant funding across basic science and clinical research. The National Cancer Institute accounts for 775 awards carrying $187.9 million in combined potential value—approximately 99% of the Institute's total federal research portfolio. Recent representative awards illustrate the breadth of work: a $10.5 million Cooperative Agreement from the Defense Health Agency (CFDA 12.420) to establish and operate the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium as a coordinating center; a $843 thousand Trans-NIH Research Support grant from the NIH Office of the Director to develop single-cell genomic recording technologies for cell-fate research; a $1.47 million Cancer Treatment Research award to investigate tumor regenerative cell populations and develop L1CAM-targeted antibody-drug conjugates in locally advanced rectal cancer; and dozens of annually awarded Project Grants ranging from $140 thousand to $3.1 million supporting investigator-initiated research into cancer biology, immunotherapy, tumor microenvironments, and therapeutic resistance mechanisms. The Institute also receives smaller awards from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Defense Health Agency, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and other NIH institutes. Federal grant work spans genomics, immunology, precision medicine, clinical oncology, and basic molecular biology, with performance occurring in New York, New York.

The Institute acts as a prime recipient on 1,646 awards (85% of total) and as a named subcontractor on 294 awards (15%), indicating primary dependence on direct federal funding rather than subcontracting to larger primes. The SCI dataset—covering federal service contracts above $150,000—reports minimal activity: 9 total records between FY2022 and FY2025, all in a subcontractor role, with roughly 2.4 FTEs in FY2025. This sparse SCI footprint reflects the Institute's research-grant-heavy business model and nonprofit status; most work is funded through research grants (reported in a different federal system) rather than service contracts.

Customer concentration is stark. The National Cancer Institute represents approximately 40% of all awards and drives 100% of the declared combined potential value in the source portfolio summary; the broader NIH ecosystem (NCI plus NIAID, NIGMS, NHLBI, and other institutes) covers 75% of award count. The Defense Health Agency, with 82 awards focused on military medical research and development (CFDA 12.420), represents the second-largest federal customer category. The Institute has worked with 53 distinct federal agencies, but the portfolio is heavily skewed toward NIH. Activity has grown from 103 awards in 2023 to 178 in 2024, then moderated to 141 in 2025, with 188 awards scheduled to reach completion within the next 24 months—a recompete exposure window that will require sustained pursuit of renewal and continuation awards across the NCI portfolio.

Representative sub-award work places the Institute in collaborative research consortia. Sloan-Kettering researchers serve as co-investigators and sub-recipients on multi-institutional NIH projects led by Columbia University, Cornell (Weill), Johns Hopkins, Duke, UCSF, and other academic centers, conducting specialized analyses—immunology, genomics, bioinformatics, patient recruitment, tissue banking—within larger cooperative research agreements. In contract sub-awards, the Institute has performed computational influenza phylogenetics analysis on behalf of the MSSM Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research (subaward from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) and contributed to the USPSTF colorectal cancer screening evidence review (subaward from Westat).

The Institute competes predominantly in full-and-open settings; no set-aside designations (8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB) appear across the federal awards in the source. As a tax-exempt nonprofit research institution affiliated with a major academic medical center, Sloan-Kettering does not claim SBA small-business status and participates in federal funding streams reserved for academic and nonprofit organizations rather than small or disadvantaged-business-set-aside vehicles.