A mission against an ultra-rare cancer

Finding the treatments that don't yet exist.

Mission Pegasus is a focused, urgent effort to discover and test therapies for SDH-deficient GIST — a rare cancer, most often striking young people, that today's targeted drugs barely touch. I'm building the research that no one else is racing to do.

Get involved Understand the disease
01
The Story
Maia Salti
Maia, 22 — the reason Mission Pegasus exists.

One rare diagnosis, and a refusal to wait.

My daughter Maia — 22, a university student — was diagnosed in December 2025 with SDH-deficient GIST, an ultra-rare cancer that a routine scan happened to catch. Her story was featured by UC San Diego Health. Reaching a clear diagnosis took three specialist opinions. Reaching a treatment was harder still: the drugs that transformed survival for common GIST do little against this subtype, and almost no research is aimed squarely at it.

I'm Muwaffaq Salti, Maia's father. I spent my career in financial markets making decisions under uncertainty — and I decided not to sit and wait for science to reach a disease this rare on its own.

Mission Pegasus is my response: a focused, personally-funded initiative to compress that timeline — backing the most promising scientific leads, putting them in front of the right laboratories and clinicians, and pushing real treatment options forward as fast as rigour allows. It began with one family's diagnosis; its purpose is bigger — better options for everyone facing this cancer.

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Rare doesn't mean hopeless. It means someone has to go first.
The Mission Pegasus premise
02
The Science

Why this cancer slips through the cracks.

SDH-deficient GIST is a rare form of a rare cancer, driven by the loss of an enzyme the cell uses to make energy — a completely different mechanism from the common form of the disease. That single difference means the front-line targeted drugs, which transformed outcomes for most GIST patients, work poorly here.

Because it's uncommon, it attracts little dedicated funding and few dedicated trials. Connecting the dots across metabolism, immunology and emerging therapies — and testing them properly — is exactly what Mission Pegasus exists to drive.

Read the full explainer →
03
The Approach

Turning capital and focus into real treatment options.

Mission Pegasus works like a small, fast research programme rather than a traditional charity. The model is simple: identify the most promising scientific leads, put them in front of the right laboratories and clinicians, and fund the experiments that move an idea toward a usable treatment.

That means backing modern, functional approaches — testing candidate therapies against faithful models of the disease, and pursuing the emerging science of metabolism and immunotherapy where the biggest opportunities lie. Every pound and every partnership is directed at one question: what can actually help.

04
Get Involved

A small mission with a large ambition. Join it.

Collaborate

Scientists, clinicians and labs working in rare cancers, metabolism or immuno-oncology — if the problem interests you, I want to hear from you.

For researchers →

Support the research

Focused funding moves this work faster than anything else. If you're a philanthropist or foundation drawn to high-leverage, under-funded science, let's talk.

Fund a lead →

Join the team

The mission occasionally needs sharp, driven people to help run it. If that's you, introduce yourself.

Get in touch →
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Contact

Let's find the treatments that don't exist yet.

Whether you want to collaborate, support the work, or simply understand it better — the door is open.

Send a message

…or email hello@missionpegasus.com