Princeton joins new cancer research hub established with gift from Weill Family Foundation

Princeton University is collaborating with The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in a new East Coast hub dedicated to making immunotherapy more effective for cancer patients, an initiative launched with a $50 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation and to be matched with philanthropy from each partner institution that together will total more than $125 million.

Philanthropists Joan and Sanford I. Weill announced the new partnership in a press release today, together with leaders of the four institutions.

The Weill Cancer Hub East “connects world-class experts” from the four institutions to advance the promise of immunotherapy for cancer patients by examining “the interplay between nutrition, metabolism and immunotherapy,” the press release said. 

“With the best minds in the field armed with the most advanced research techniques, the Weill Cancer Hub East will seek to elevate immunotherapy and improve patient care for people battling cancer,” Sanford “Sandy” Weill said in the press release. “Joan and I could not be more excited about the endless possibilities of this special partnership — investment in science and medicine is our labor of love.”

“The hub will enable extraordinary biomedical scientists, leading clinicians and the New York medical community to join forces in new ways and leverages our academic research with amazing translational and clinical expertise,” said Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber. “At Princeton, we have found that when we support collaboration across disciplines, transformative scientific advances follow. This unprecedented partnership in our region’s biomedical innovation ecosystem has the potential to speed cures and treatments where they are most needed.”

The new Weill Cancer Hub East will let Princeton’s world-class scientists and engineers combine forces with its partner institutions’ cancer doctors and clinicians “in the most integrated way possible — knowing the urgency of helping patients with cancer,” said Joshua Rabinowitz, who will direct Princeton’s role in the hub. “We have to do whatever we can, scientifically, to find solutions for patients.” Rabinowitz is a professor in Princeton’s Department of Chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, and he directs the Ludwig Princeton Branch.

Key research areas include studying how diet affects immunotherapy treatments, understanding the role of the gut microbiome in the success of those treatments, and learning how diet and exercise can improve outcomes. “We know diet is part of the problem, and we’re really excited about the possibility for diet to be part of a cancer cure,” said Rabinowitz.

The full release follows:

$50 Million Gift from the Weill Family Foundation Establishes the Weill Cancer Hub East

Collaborative Entity Formed by Princeton University, The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research to Investigate the Interplay Between Nutrition, Metabolism and Immunotherapy

New York, N.Y., and Princeton, N.J. (March 27, 2025)— With a mission to understand how nutrition and metabolism impact the body’s ability to control cancer, four leading research institutions have united under the Weill Cancer Hub East, an innovative, collaborative partnership that aims to transform cancer treatment. The initiative connects world-class experts from Princeton University, The Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medicine and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research to enhance a therapeutic strategy known as immunotherapy that harnesses a patient’s own immune cells to treat cancer. Immunotherapy holds much promise, but its effectiveness varies in different people and against different types of cancer.

The Weill Cancer Hub East was established with a transformational $50 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation, directed by visionary benefactors Joan and Sanford I. Weill, and matched with philanthropy from each partner institution that together will total more than $125 million. The initiative seeks to break down institutional barriers and unite top experts in cancer biology, cancer clinical trials, immunology, nutrition and metabolism to drive pioneering, cross-field collaboration that pushes the boundaries of scientific discovery.

Over the next decade, the Weill Cancer Hub East will marshal multidisciplinary teams to explore the complex relationship between solid tumors and the environment in which they form and grow. Their investigations will leverage the complementary strengths of each research institution to illuminate how the food we eat and the beneficial microbes that help metabolize that food influence the effectiveness of cancer treatments such as immunotherapy. The hub will also evaluate how emerging therapeutics, including a class of diabetes and anti-obesity drugs called GLP-1 agonists, might impact cancer progression and treatment.

“The Weill Cancer Hub East will offer doctors and scientists a tremendous opportunity to revolutionize the treatment of cancer, a disease that complicates so many lives,” said Sandy Weill, founder of the Weill Family Foundation and chair emeritus of the Weill Cornell Medicine Board of Fellows. “With the best minds in the field armed with the most advanced research techniques, the Weill Cancer Hub East will seek to elevate immunotherapy and improve patient care for people battling cancer. Joan and I could not be more excited about the endless possibilities of this special partnership—investment in science and medicine is our labor of love.”

The Weill family and the Weill Family Foundation have long championed the advancement of exceptional science and medicine. The Weill Cancer Hub East exemplifies the notion that teamwork inspires the best, most groundbreaking science, and is the second such collaborative entity to be established in recent years through the Weill family and its foundation’s philanthropy. The Weill Neurohub, founded in 2019, engages researchers and clinicians from UC San Francisco, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Washington and the Allen Institute to speed the development of new treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases.

In total, the Weill family and the Weill Family Foundation have gifted more than $1 billion to nonprofits in the United States and around the globe, ranging from education, social causes, music and the arts to medical research and patient care.

Cutting-Edge Research to Enhance Immunotherapy

Heralded as the “fifth pillar” alongside surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and precision-targeted therapeutics, immunotherapy is a powerful approach for many types of cancers. While the other therapies attempt to remove or attack cancer cells directly, immunotherapy utilizes a patient's own immune system to strike the disease from within.

“How we can increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy across all cancer types and patients is one of the scientific questions that most needs answering,” said Dr. Robert A. Harrington, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine. “By convening world-class institutions with leading investigators in their respective fields, including those at Weill Cornell’s Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, the Weill Cancer Hub East seeks to discover new ways that nutrition and gut microbes can improve the immune response to the disease. This initiative is a testament to the power of philanthropy to advance science and medicine, and we are profoundly appreciative of Joan, Sandy and the Weill Family Foundation for their out-of-the-box, visionary commitment.”

Using the latest advances in metabolomics, immunology, computational analysis and artificial intelligence, the Weill Cancer Hub East will explore how metabolism affects the immune system’s ability to recognize and control cancer.

“The hub will enable extraordinary biomedical scientists, leading clinicians and the New York medical community to join forces in new ways and leverages our academic research with amazing translational and clinical expertise,” said Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of Princeton University. “At Princeton, we have found that when we support collaboration across disciplines, transformative scientific advances follow. This unprecedented partnership in our region’s biomedical innovation ecosystem has the potential to speed cures and treatments where they are most needed.”

The hub will offer seed funding to basic, clinical and translational scientists from Princeton University, The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medicine to pursue collaborative projects that focus on reprogramming the tumor microenvironment and augmenting cell function by modulating patients’ metabolisms and microbiomes. The hub will also offer a portfolio of clinical trials, including those that explore whether GLP-1 agonists, which are designed to modify a person’s metabolism, have downstream beneficial effects on a cancer patient’s immune response and outcome. Findings gleaned from these investigations may have applications in cardiovascular, metabolic and autoimmune conditions.

“Immune modulation and engineered immune effector cell therapies have transformed the treatment of a number of cancers, begging the question of how these and related therapies can be extended to many others,” said Dr. Richard Lifton, president of The Rockefeller University. “The funding for this collaboration allows for a deep, mechanistic investigation into how one’s diet, metabolism and microbiome can affect cancer immunotherapy. Promoting the integration of basic science and clinical investigation will promote discoveries that will improve patient outcomes.”

As a leading international sponsor of cancer research, the non-profit Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research is already funding innovative studies in cancer metabolism and immunotherapy at its Collaborative Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine and in its Branch at Princeton University. These laboratories will provide additional investigative support to the efforts of the Hub.

“In establishing our Institute, Daniel K. Ludwig expressed the hope that his philanthropy would enable a sustained, extensively collaborative effort to conquer cancer,” said Dr. Chi Van Dang, CEO and Scientific Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. “This collaboration, galvanized by the Weill Cancer Hub East, is in line with our vision to bring world-class expertise together to yield discoveries that help us overcome the metabolic challenges tumors pose to cancer immunotherapy, with the goal of alleviating the suffering of cancer patients.”

A scientific steering committee, comprising one scientific leader from each academic institution, will oversee the hub’s scientific activities. The committee members are:

• Dr. Joshua Rabinowitz, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, and director of the Princeton Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
• Dr. Sohail Tavazoie, the Leon Hess Professor, head of the Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology and director of the Black Center for Metastasis Research at The Rockefeller University
• Dr. Jedd Wolchok, the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, co-director of the Ludwig Collaborative Laboratory and co-director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine

A leadership committee, comprising leaders from Princeton, Rockefeller, Weill Cornell Medicine and Ludwig, along with representatives from the Weill Family Foundation, will direct the hub’s scientific strategy. Licensed discoveries with commercial potential will provide further financial support for the hub, as will ongoing philanthropy from each of the three academic institutions.

The hub's structure will ensure that it is adaptable to unexpected and unknown future directions of cancer research. The hub will also support the recruitment of talented colleagues to fill gaps in knowledge and train the next generation of cancer researchers. Symposia, retreats and meetings designed to share information, harmonize and encourage new alliances, and inspire participants across the hub – and beyond – will be an important component to building and expanding the team model.

“The Weill Cancer Hub East has enormous potential to transform the way we treat cancer and change the world,” Sandy Weill said. “Joan and I can’t wait to see all of the innovations that emerge from the initiative.”