The American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) is partnering with the National Cancer Institute’s NCI-CONNECT program to advance the understanding of rare adult central nervous system (CNS) cancers to improve approaches to care and treatment.

With 130 different brain and CNS tumor types, brain and CNS diagnoses only represent 1.4 percent of cancers, making it challenging for the research community to conduct clinical trials with a small patient population.

A small patient population is good news for the vast majority of the population, but fewer patients makes it harder for researchers to access tumor tissue to better understand brain and CNS cancers and it delays exploration into possible treatment therapies.

NCI-CONNECT aims to eliminate these barriers by:

• connecting patients, providers, researchers and community organizations to work in partnership;
• collecting, analyzing and sharing data on select rare CNS tumors to enable a better understanding and develop standard of care; and
• investigating new therapies to improve patient care.

ABTA Working on Your Behalf

As a leader within the brain tumor community, the ABTA is dedicated to increasing awareness of rare brain tumors and accelerating treatment possibilities. Collaboration within the brain tumor patient advocacy community, sharing of research findings with the research community and educating patients on the importance of clinical trials are essential to expediting scientific discovery and treatments. President and Chief Executive Officer, Ralph DeVitto and Chief Mission Officer, Nicole Willmarth, PhD recently attended the 2019 NCI-CONNECT Annual Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland.

What You Can Do

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with one of the rare adult brain or CNS tumors listed below, contact NCI-CONNECT to discuss if you may be a candidate for NCI-sponsored clinical trials or care evaluation. Should the NCI determine you are a candidate for one of its programs, it will pay for costs associated with travel and care.

Tumor Types

For more information about tumor types, visit the NCI website.

Make the Call

Call NCI-CONNECT at (240) 760-6530, visit cancer.gov/nci-connect or email NCICONNECT@mail.nih.gov to learn more.