The Mark Foundation - Annual Report 2025

True breakthroughs do not come from backing the safe status quo; they come from absorbing the early-stage risks that traditional funders cannot touch for reasons of either rigid mandates or pragmatic commercial focus. Throughout 2025, we saw powerful proof of what happens when you back that kind of early promise. The high-risk ideas we originally supported and funded in basic science labs are successfully transitioning into clinical trials and changing the way we think about preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. We have also focused heavily on building the collaborative infrastructure needed to move the needle. In 2025, we launched the Samuel Waxman Institute for Aging & Cancer to investigate the critical intersection of longevity and oncology. At the same time, we broke down institutional silos to spearhead powerhouse coalitions with other non-profit leaders. Now, more than ever, philanthropy plays a critical role in advancing science, and aligning our efforts exponentially increases our impact on cancer research across the US and internationally. Nearly a decade into The Mark Foundation mission, this work remains deeply personal to me. I am immensely grateful to Ryan, Ray, Ross, and our extraordinary global network of scientists and partners. We are proving that when you meet bold science with urgency and strategic discipline, you do more than just fund research—you give patients the future they deserve.

While 2025 brought continued volatility to the cancer research funding landscape, The Mark Foundation remained a reliable force for driving innovation. Throughout the year, we awarded over $43 million in new grant funding, supporting a rigorous portfolio that generated hundreds of original peer-reviewed publications as well as numerous new inventions, drug candidates, and diagnostics, all indicators that we are accelerating the research that will ultimately lead to better outcomes for cancer patients. Meaningful progress requires moving beyond institutional silos. In 2025, we deepened our impact by partnering with leading peer organizations to host workshops and fund collaborative grants. These efforts are specifically designed to tackle the field’s most intractable challenges, including new treatments for brain cancer and early detection of some of the deadliest cancers. The strength of our model is increasingly evident in the clinic and beyond. This year marked a vital shift as research we have supported from its earliest discovery and translational stages progressed toward patient-facing solutions with the launch of four new interventional trials. Simultaneously, our portfolio companies demonstrated significant commercial maturity, raising a combined $461 million through strategic acquisitions and venture investments—capital critical to scaling these discoveries into accessible treatments. None of this would be possible without our grantees and partners, whose resilience and dedication drive the field forward despite a challenging environment. As you review the data in this report, you will see a community that is not merely sustaining research but actively accelerating it toward a more hopeful future.

In September 2025, we announced the launch of the Samuel Waxman Institute for Aging & Cancer. The institute, a subsidiary of The Mark Foundation dedicated to accelerating scientific discoveries at the intersection of aging and cancer, integrates the legacy of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation (SWCRF) into a scaled, global platform. During its inaugural three years, the Waxman Institute will award at least $15 million in grants, prioritizing cross-disciplinary collaborations. By design, these awards will unite diverse experts—including chemical biologists, drug developers, bioengineers, and AI specialists—to dismantle the complex biology of age-related cancers from every possible angle.

The Samuel Waxman Institute for Aging & Cancer is dedicated to addressing the leading risk factor for cancer—aging. By uniting scientists worldwide to study aging and cancer together, the Institute accelerates discoveries that will identify individual cancer risk, improve prevention and early detection, and advance treatments toward a future of healthier aging and reduced cancer for all.

The establishment of the Waxman Institute represents the natural evolution of a multi-year partnership. Since 2022, The Mark Foundation and SWCRF have co-hosted annual workshops to bridge these two fields, culminating in a joint 2024 investment of $1.5 million across three collaborative pilot projects.

The Institute launched into action immediately, convening a two-day strategic workshop with The Jackson Laboratory last fall that brought together nearly 50 international experts to align on research targets and priorities. Building on that momentum, the Institute announced its latest cohort of aging and cancer grants in February 2026, awarding $500,000 per project to fuel high-potential research teams over the next three years.

For five decades, Samuel Waxman, MD, has been a visionary leader in oncology, pioneering minimally toxic therapies that prioritized patient quality of life. His landmark collaboration with scientists in Shanghai resulted in the development of a combination therapy including both retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide that turned acute promyelocytic leukemia from a 100% fatal disease into one with a 95% survival rate. Dr. Waxman received China’s prestigious Friendship Award for this breakthrough. As the founder of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, Dr. Waxman raised more than $120 million in funding and broke down silos to create multidisciplinary international research partnerships. His work in phenotypic reprogramming—teaching cancer cells to behave like healthy ones—remains at the cutting edge of science. With the formation of the Samuel Waxman Institute for Aging & Cancer, Dr. Waxman’s legacy enters a new chapter and formalizes his longstanding commitment to bridging the critical gap between the biology of aging and oncology to help people live longer, healthier lives.

When the FDA approved the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in 2017, it signaled the dawn of a radical new era in oncology: living medicines. By genetically reprogramming a patient’s own immune cells to hunt down and destroy cancer, scientists had achieved what once seemed impossible. Yet, nearly a decade into this revolution, the promise of these therapies remains out of reach for most patients. In blood cancers, CAR-T has become a lifesaving reality, though its broad global uptake remains hindered by industrial bottlenecks and staggering costs. For solid tumors—which make up the vast majority of diagnoses—effective CAR-T therapies remain elusive. Supported by early-stage, risk-tolerant funding from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, two physician-scientists are leading the charge to break through these barriers from entirely different angles. One sought to eliminate the manufacturing bottleneck completely by bringing the cell factory directly inside the human body; the other is using cutting-edge synthetic biology to build highly intelligent, armored cells capable of invading and conquering the most hostile solid tumors. Together, their journeys represent a paradigm shift in how we engineer life to fight disease.

In April 2025, scientists from 13 states and seven countries converged on New York City for The Mark Foundation’s fifth annual Scientific Symposium. The event provided a vital, high-energy forum for our global network of grantees to share emerging data, challenge assumptions, and spark new collaborative partnerships to accelerate cancer breakthroughs. The program included talks by eleven Mark Foundation-funded investigators, who shared groundbreaking discoveries in areas ranging from using circulating tumor DNA to monitor cancer evolution to the impact of obesity on responses to cancer immunotherapy. Regina Barzilay, PhD, the School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health at MIT, delivered a keynote address on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in cancer medicine. James Bradner, MD, Executive Vice President, Research and Development at Amgen, joined Ross Levine, MD, Senior Vice President, Translational Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Chair, Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee, for a fireside chat.

The single greatest obstacle to surviving the world’s most lethal cancers—including pancreatic, ovarian, and esophageal malignancies—is time. Historically, these diseases have acted as silent killers, discovered only after they have metastasized and become incurable. To change that reality, The Mark Foundation catalyzed a powerhouse coalition alongside the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Lustgarten Foundation, Break Through Cancer, and The Honorable Tina Brozman Foundation (Tina’s Wish). Together, the organizations have invested $12 million in six teams of leading global investigators, an initiative that moves past traditional funding silos and brings together scientists with differing areas of expertise and institutional affiliations. The momentum for this coalition was sparked during a strategic workshop in Philadelphia, where dozens of international experts identified the technical hurdles—such as the need for more sensitive screening tools—that have stalled progress for decades. Today, these teams are leveraging frontier technologies such as single-cell profiling and artificial intelligence to spot the signs of cancer before they become lethal. “We can’t cure what we can’t detect,” says Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD, CEO of The Mark Foundation. “This coalition breaks down barriers between funders and disciplines to ensure that for cancers that have historically been the most difficult to find, we are finally driving the faster progress patients deserve.”

Glioblastoma (GBM) remains one of the most formidable challenges in oncology. Despite decades of effort, the median survival rate sits at less than 18 months, hampered by the blood-brain barrier and the tumor’s aggressive resistance to standard therapies. Breaking this stalemate demands a new level of philanthropic coordination—and in 2025, we launched a powerful coalition to make that possible. The Mark Foundation and The Sontag Foundation led a group of six non-profit funders—including the National Brain Tumor Society, The Anne and Claude Berda Foundation, the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation, and the Uncle Kory Foundation—to award $4 million in new grants specifically for GBM therapeutics. Administered by The Mark Foundation, this joint program funds five high-potential projects that emerged directly from the cross-disciplinary collaborations sparked at the GBM workshop hosted by The Mark Foundation and The Sontag Foundation in 2024. These projects represent a shift away from incremental steps toward transformative drug discovery strategies. “This collaborative effort supports the ideas that have the best chance of developing effective new treatments for this devastating disease,” says Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD, CEO of The Mark Foundation. By uniting resources and expertise across the philanthropic sector, we are ensuring that no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of a cure.

Follicular lymphoma (FL) presents a frustrating paradox: while the disease is usually slow-growing, it can quickly transform into a highly aggressive, deadly malignancy. Because doctors lack a validated biomarker to predict this change, more than a million FL patients worldwide face profound uncertainty that often leads to overtreatment or missed windows for early intervention. To change this reality, The Mark Foundation partnered with the Follicular Lymphoma Foundation (FLF), combining deep, disease-specific insights with our agile ASPIRE grant framework. Together, the foundations are co-funding two ASPIRE Awards totaling $700,000. These grants empower multidisciplinary teams to leverage advanced tools like spatial transcriptomics to map the lymphoma microenvironment. By regularly connecting these teams—who are attacking the problem from entirely different biological angles—the partnership aims to replace passive “watchful waiting” with proactive precision medicine.

Imagine trying to catch hold of a shadow. For decades, that has been the frustrating reality for cancer researchers targeting a group of cellular actors called intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). While most proteins fold into stable, predictable structures that drugs can easily grab onto, IDPs do the exact opposite. They are structural chameleons, constantly morphing and moving inside human cells like strands of spaghetti floating in water. This shape-shifting behavior is a major challenge in oncology because many of the most aggressive, lethal drivers of cancer are IDPs. Yet since they don’t stay in one formation long enough to be targeted, they’ve long been seen as “undruggable.” To break this stalemate, The Mark Foundation convened a strategic workshop in January 2025. Hosted alongside the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the event united a global brain trust of structural biologists, biophysicists, and AI experts. Their mission: find a way to track, map, and ultimately intercept these elusive molecular targets.

Building directly on the momentum and collaborative pairings sparked at the workshop, The Mark Foundation launched a targeted Request for Proposals through the ASPIRE Award program. Three multidisciplinary teams were selected to pursue highly novel IDP research initiatives.

Contributions of financial assets | $ 29,964,145 | $ 44,393,676Contributions of nonfinancial assets | 38,900 | 27,200Investment income (loss), net | 6,240,013 | (1,498,752)Foreign exchange gain (loss) | 61,899 | (30,647)Loss on disposal of property and equipment | (3,075) | (4,982)Total Support and Revenue | $36,301,882 | $42,886,495

Program services | $ 41,901,792 | $ 32,757,049Management and general | 1,291,414 | 1,151,100Fundraising | 1,251,178 | 1,015,545Total Expenses | $44,444,384 | $34,923,694

Our audited financial statements and annual 990 forms are <a href="https://themarkfoundation.org/reports-and-financials/" rel="noopener">available here.</a>

Cash and cash equivalents | $ 12,161,331 | $ 4,163,153Contributions receivable, net | 71,197,170 | 67,188,474Accrued interest receivable | 8,834 | 50,865Escrow receivable | 1,403,646 | —Investments | 11,778,645 | 30,608,514Notes receivable, net | 1,778,376 | 2,074,290Prepaid expenses and other assets | 406,880 | 130,565Right-of-use asset – operating lease | 531,211 | 878,898Capitalized software, net | 91,870 | 156,545Property and equipment, net | 41,734 | 53,431Security deposit | 123,983 | 154,979Total Assets | $99,523,680 | $105,459,714

Accounts payable and accrued expenses | $ 680,621 | $ 508,742Grants payable, net | 13,994,655 | 11,578,247Lease liability | 551,136 | 932,955Total Liabilities | $15,226,412 | $13,019,944

Without donor restrictions | $ 76,825,232 | $ 83,738,330With donor restrictions | 7,472,036 | 8,701,440Total Net Assets | $84,297,268 | $92,439,770