# Salk Institute Cancer Center

Source: https://onco.cc/institutions/salk-institute/  
OnCo record `salk-institute` (Institution). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Jonas Salk's institute, an NCI basic cancer centre since 1973, where tyrosine phosphorylation and much of nuclear receptor and metabolism biology were discovered.

## Summary

The Salk Institute's cancer centre has held NCI basic laboratory designation since 1973. Tony Hunter discovered tyrosine phosphorylation here in 1979, the biochemical foundation of every kinase inhibitor; Inder Verma pioneered retroviral and lentiviral gene delivery; Ronald Evans's nuclear receptor work led to vitamin D receptor-targeted stromal reprogramming in pancreatic cancer; Reuben Shaw dissected the LKB1-AMPK metabolic checkpoint. Geoffrey Wahl's breast cancer stem cell biology and Susan Kaech's T-cell exhaustion research connect the institute to immunotherapy. Salk has no clinic and works through collaborations with UC San Diego and other La Jolla institutions.

## Fields

- Kind: Institution
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Also known as: Salk Institute for Biological Studies
- City: La Jolla, CA, US
- Type: research-institute
- NCI designation: basic
- Website: https://www.salk.edu/science/research-centers/salk-cancer-center/

## Sources

- Salk Cancer Center: https://www.salk.edu/science/research-centers/salk-cancer-center/
- Salk Institute: https://www.salk.edu

## Connected records

- cancers: [Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic/), [Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc/)
- fronts: [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/), [Targeted Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/targeted-therapy/)
- technologies: [Metabolic therapy: starving the tumour of a nutrient](https://onco.cc/technologies/metabolic-therapy/), [Small-molecule kinase inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/kinase-inhibitors/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/), [UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/ucsd-moores/)
- people: [Reuben Shaw](https://onco.cc/people/reuben-shaw/)
- bottlenecks: [Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-tme-immunosuppression/)
- collections: [NCI-Designated Cancer Centers](https://onco.cc/collections/nci-cancer-centers/)

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