Minnesota Shines In Cancer Research Ranking Among All States

Thanks to a large number of doctors and a healthy dose of clinical trials, Minnesota ranks among the top states in the US for cancer research.

According to the National Cancer Institute, 620,000 people died from cancer in the United States in 2025, and around two million others were diagnosed. This year, the National Cancer Institute will receive $4.5 billion for cancer research.

Smile Hub set out to find the best states the country for cancer research. While Massachusetts, New York, California, Pennsylvania and Colorado made up the top five, Minnesota placed a strong tenth for cancer research.

SMILE HUB: 

While many researchers across the United States are working to understand and treat all kinds of cancer, some states create better environments for researching the disease than others. To highlight the best states for cancer research and those that have room to improve, SmileHub compared each of the 50 states based on 13 key metrics. The data set ranges from the number of research charities per capita to the cancer mortality rate to the quality of cancer treatment hospitals.

WHY DOES MINNESOTA STAND OUT FOR CANCER RESEARCH

Using the categories of Research Funding, Research Output and Health Care Funding, Smile Hub ranked each of the states. Minnesota finished 26th in the Research Output category, 21st in Research Funding and an outstanding 4th in Health Care Infrastructure, thanks to our wonderful hospital systems.

Minnesota also boasts the fourth-most researchers per capita, behind only Massachusetts, Utah and Colorado.