In March 2025, on the heels of announcing its split from Boston-based Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham shared plans to invest $400 million to expand oncology services through the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute.
Less than a month later, David Ryan, MD, was appointed as the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute’s inaugural president.
In his more than two decades with the health system, Dr. Ryan has served as physician-in-chief for the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, as chief of hematology/oncology and as clinical director of the Mass General Cancer Center.
That journey has informed what he sees as a four-part mission for the cancer institute: to provide the best cancer care across the spectrum of cancer — and really human — illness; to leave the field better off through research and innovation; to teach the next generation how to do those two things; and to serve the community.
“It’s been an evolution for me on my journey as a clinician and academician on how to view and communicate our mission,” Dr. Ryan told Becker’s.
In his first year as president, Dr. Ryan prioritized learning how his Mass General Brigham colleagues viewed the cancer institute’s mission, understanding their concerns and setting up the right leadership structure across the institute.
Looking ahead, Dr. Ryan is focused on ensuring the cancer institute continues to serve its community by leading the way in research and innovation or expanding patient access to care.
“Mass General Brigham has a responsibility to build out our community programs as best as humanly possible. If patients can get care closer to home, they should, and we should be able to provide that,” he said. “At the same time, we have to be able to provide access to care at the Brigham or Mass General on a moment’s notice. Getting our lower-intensity care pathways out into the community, so that we can make room for our higher-intensity cancers that require higher-intensity care is critically important if we’re going to meet the needs of the community.”
It is an access strategy that applies just as easily to the 1,000 clinical trials the cancer institute runs annually. Dr. Ryan and his team are focused on building up the infrastructure and expertise to run lower-intensity clinical trials outside of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston or Mass General.
“It is critically important for folks to understand just how expensive it is to run clinical trials. The infrastructure that supports the safe delivery of clinical trials requires a certain level of investment and input, and some community sites are too small to do that,” Dr. Ryan said. “However, those patients still need to know if there is a clinical trial that’s important for them to get on. We’re busy building the communications infrastructure that allows our community sites, and really anybody contacting Mass General Brigham, to access that knowledge.”
When asked what it would take for him to feel as though progress was being made, or even success achieved, in the next five years, Dr. Ryan returned to the cancer institute’s mission.
For him, success will look like meeting the needs of the community by providing the best standard of care and the best education efforts for trainees, residents, fellows, nurses and advanced practice providers, and leading the world in research and innovation, particularly in the locally advanced setting.
“Our program is about caring for the whole person: the mind, the body and the spirit. There’s a phrase in Latin, cura personalis, that we really embrace,” he said. “Being a steward of an organization like Mass General Brigham allows us to meet all of those aspects of the care journey. Bringing that phrase to bear is one of the great both obligations and responsibilities that we have.”
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