Our Mission

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Immune Discovery & Modeling Service (IDMS) provides innovative, state-of-the-art technologies to identify rare cell types, detect proteins, and measure drugs at levels not detectable by conventional clinical instruments.

Our mission is to maximize the potential of immunotherapy and improve the survival and quality of life of cancer patients. Immunotherapy approaches are successfully used to treat multiple malignancies, but relapse and therapy-related complications are still a common cause of treatment failure and mortality. Our goal is to identify unique biomarker signatures and develop them into validated, clinical assays that predict response or resistance to treatment and help personalize cancer therapy.

Our team provides a wide array of standardized, cutting-edge molecular and cell-based assays using state-of-the-art platforms. Additionally, we specialize in developing customized biomarker analysis by leveraging the basic, clinical, and computational expertise of our multidisciplinary group.

Currently, the IDMS supports over 40 research projects within and outside of MSKCC with a variety of federal, industry and private funding. Our lab works in collaboration with MSKCC’s Clinical Laboratory Medicine to correlate research and clinical data during immunotherapy and to facilitate the development of new diagnostic assays. Through close connections with MSKCC’s various core facilities, research labs, and other services, the IDMS has the capacity to provide wide-ranging expertise in the areas of immunology, microbiome, genomics, and bioinformatics, and dramatically improve the quality of immunotherapy for cancer patients.