When the Center for Cancer Discovery opened its doors in August 2025, it began a new chapter for cancer research at MCW. Built to bring scientists, clinicians, trainees, staff, and community partners closer together, the 161,000-square-foot facility created a shared home for people tackling cancer from different directions, with the idea that proximity could lead to stronger connections, new collaborations, and discoveries that reach patients faster.

One year later, that vision is taking shape. Researchers who once worked across campus now cross paths in hallways, share ideas and expertise, and find new opportunities to work together. Colleagues have become collaborators. Longstanding Cancer Center traditions have found a new home, new ones have begun, and scientists, trainees, community members, donors, and partners have all brought new energy and purpose into the building

And this is only the beginning. The Center ended its first year with a transformational $27 million gift from Tim and Barbara Michels and the Michels Family Foundation, establishing the Michels Center for Cancer Discovery (MCCD) and bringing new momentum to the work happening inside. The investment marks a defining moment in the MCCD’s young history and sets the stage for an even more ambitious second year and beyond.

What A Year

• August 2025: The Center for Cancer Discovery officially opens its doors with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by elected officials, community leaders, donors, researchers, and partners.
• September 2025: Translating Hope, a mural by Milwaukee artist Mauricio Ramirez, is unveiled in the main conference space.
• October 2025: More than 170 researchers, trainees, and staff gather for the annual MCW Cancer Center Scientific Retreat, one of the first scientific events held in the new building.
• November 2025: The inaugural Audaxity Impact Party brings researchers, patients, and supporters together to celebrate more than $1 million raised through the first ride.
• December 2025: The Center brings personalized medicine to more patients through the new Center for Precision Oncology and Rare Cancers, led by Dr. Razelle Kurzrock.
• January 2026: The launch of the Center for Cancer Discovery Insider creates a new way for building occupants to share updates, resources, events, and opportunities to connect.
• February 2026: The inaugural Cheers to Discovery brings colleagues together to celebrate scientific progress, recognize achievements across the research community, and explore technologies available through the Cancer Center’s Shared Resources.
• March 2026: The building earns recognition of its own, named a finalist for Best New Construction in the Milwaukee Business Journal’s 2026 Real Estate Awards.
• April 2026: The third annual Care for the Cancer Caregiver event welcomes caregivers and community members to the building for a day focused on research, resources, and support.
• May 2026: The fourth annual Trainee Symposium comes to the new space for the first time, showcasing emerging cancer research and connecting the next generation of scientists with colleagues and mentors.
• June 2026: MCW announces a transformational $27 million gift to establish the MCCD; the landmark investment will accelerate cancer research, fuel new discoveries, and strengthen the Center’s ability to move promising science toward better care for patients.
• July 2026: Hundreds of riders, volunteers, sponsors, researchers, and supporters fill the MCCD for the Rev Up, kicking off the second annual Audaxity ride weekend and connecting the community with the cancer research their fundraising helps make possible.

Where Science Meets Serendipity

Some of the MCCD’s most meaningful milestones never made the calendar.

Joseph Zenga, MD, Associate Professor and Chief of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology & Reconstruction, had an established lab elsewhere on campus when he was first asked about moving to the MCCD. He initially hesitated, as moving a working research lab is no small undertaking. But access to shared technology and the opportunity to work alongside other cancer scientists ultimately convinced him to make the move.

At the time, Dr. Zenga’s team was working through a frustrating bottleneck. His lab engineers T cells with the goal of developing personalized therapies that recognize and attack a patient’s cancer. The work required specialized pieces of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) that had to be ordered from an outside company, at considerable cost and with weeks of waiting.

Then Dr. Zenga started talking science with the cellular engineer next door: Fumou Sun, PhD, Assistant Professor of Hematology and Oncology.

Dr. Sun’s lab focuses primarily on CAR T-cell therapy, while Dr. Zenga works largely in TCR-T therapy. Their approaches are different but complementary, and Dr. Sun saw another way to tackle the problem. He encouraged Dr. Zenga’s team to make the ssDNA themselves and provided crucial expertise and guidance along the way.

Making the idea work took another important contributor. Abdullah Memon, MCW medical student and inaugural recipient of the Center’s American Cancer Society Medical Student Fellowship, did the hands-on work. With Dr. Sun’s guidance, he optimized the technique, allowing the team to produce what it needed in-house, faster and at significantly lower cost.

Solving that bottleneck also brought Dr. Zenga’s team closer to a much bigger goal: identifying cancer-killing immune cells in an individual patient and using their genetic instructions to engineer a personalized cellular therapy.

When a patient is waiting, time and cost aren’t small details. Dr. Zenga estimates that outsourcing the DNA needed for that process could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take roughly 12 weeks. With the process his team is developing with Dr. Sun, the research version can now be completed in less than a month.

“If you can’t get it there in time, you lose. And if it’s too expensive to get it there at all, you lose,” said Dr. Zenga. “This allows us to maybe bypass those barriers.”

There’s no formula for discovery. It takes expertise, persistence, the right questions, and as Dr. Zenga readily admits, sometimes a little luck. The MCCD can’t manufacture serendipity. But it can put more opportunities for it right next door.

“I’m not sure I would have been successful in the end if I didn’t randomly have him as my sort of lab mate,” said Dr. Zenga. “It was amazingly serendipitous.”