While cancer mortality rates in the United States have steadily declined over recent decades, a group of recalcitrant cancers remains stubbornly lethal. For diseases like pancreatic, ovarian, and upper GI cancers, the primary barrier to survival is not just the biology of the tumor, but the timing of the diagnosis.
The Early Detection Award—$2 million grants awarded over a two-year period to teams of two to four investigators—was established by a coalition of cancer research funding organizations, led by The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, to fund the major technological leaps needed to detect these cancers when they are still treatable.
For many high-risk cancers, effective screening tests simply do not exist. This results in a cycle of late-stage diagnoses for advanced malignancies that lack curative therapies. The survival gap is stark: for patients with pancreatic cancer, the five-year relative survival rate is 43.6% when diagnosed at stage 1, compared with 3.2% once it has spread. Similarly, these rates are 48.7% vs. 5.4% for esophageal cancer and 91.7% vs. 31.8% for ovarian cancer.
To close this gap, the Early Detection Awards support research that moves beyond incremental improvements, focusing instead on the discovery, technical development, and pre-clinical validation of methods to detect aggressive precursor lesions before they become lethal.
The Early Detection Awards initiative was born from a collective recognition that significant advances in cancer screening and interception have remained elusive. In January 2025, The Mark Foundation, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and the Lustgarten Foundation convened a landmark scientific workshop in Philadelphia.
By bringing together dozens of international experts, the workshop identified the critical bottlenecks in the field—from the need for rigorous testing within randomized clinical trials to the development of novel statistical methodologies. These insights formed the foundation of our current funding strategy, ensuring that every awarded project addresses a specific, high-impact barrier in early detection. Learn more about the workshop.
In 2026, partner organizations Break Through Cancer and The Honorable Tina Brozman Foundation (Tina’s Wish) joined the coalition.
The coalition invests in multidisciplinary teams—often crossing international borders—to tackle cancers that have historically been the most difficult to detect:
By encouraging collaboration and data sharing, we aim to develop a global ecosystem where a breakthrough in one cancer type, such as a new biomarker or an AI-driven diagnostic tool, can be rapidly adapted to save lives across other types.
In February 2026, the coalition announced that the following six teams have been awarded $2 million each to pursue research aimed at overcoming the most pressing obstacles in the early detection of cancer:
Programmable Recognition of KRAS Neoantigens for Early Cancer Diagnostics Across Patients
Nikolaos G. Sgourakis, PhD, Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and University of Pennsylvania; Mark A. Sellmyer, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania; Possu Huang, PhD, Stanford University
Detection and Interception of KRAS-mutant Pancreatic Cancer Using Small Molecule RAS(ON) Inhibitors
Brian M. Wolpin, MD, MPH, and Andrew J. Aguirre, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Julie L. Sutcliffe, PhD, University of California, Davis; Laura D. Wood, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Towards a Unified Platform for Li-Fraumeni Syndrome Cancer Risk Prediction and Cell-free DNA Surveillance
Trevor J. Pugh, PhD, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, UHN, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research; Brian D. Crompton, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Paul A. Northcott, PhD, St. Jude Children’s Hospital; Kara N. Maxwell, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Digital Pathology Diagnostics for Robust Stratification of Esophageal Cancer Risk
Christina Curtis, PhD, and Greg Charville, MD, PhD, Stanford University; William M. Grady, MD, University of Washington; Rebecca Fitzgerald, MD, University of Cambridge
Molecular Profiling of Ovarian Cancer Precursors to Transform Early Detection and Precancer Stratification
Peter K. Sorger, PhD, David R. Walt, PhD, and Sandro Santagata, MD, PhD, Harvard University; Ronny I. Drapkin, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Harnessing Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) and Aneuploidy Signals in Plasma Whole Genome for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer
Dan Landau, MD, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine; Ronny I. Drapkin, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania; Paul S. Mischel, MD, FAACR, Stanford University; Adam Widman, MD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
