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DNA Damage Response (DDR) Consortium

National Brain Tumor Society’s DNA Damage Response (DDR) Consortium is a collaboration of world-class researchers advancing an emerging and promising, but underdeveloped, area of cancer research: a tumor’s DDR network.

The consortium has the ability to cultivate this budding area of research and propel an entirely new class of treatments forward for both adults and children with multiple different types of malignant brain tumors.

National Brain Tumor Society’s flagship research initiative, the DNA Damage Response (DDR) Consortium, brings together a diverse team of renowned adult and pediatric researchers to rapidly advance a new class of promising potential treatments that can target a brain tumor’s DNA damage response network.

What is DNA Damage Response (DDR)?

Research indicates that disrupted DDR networks are possibly an ‘Achilles’ heel’ for tumors, leaving them vulnerable to a new group of treatments currently being developed.

Unlike other, more traditional precision medicine strategies, targeting tumor DDR may be applicable to virtually all malignant brain tumor types, both in children and in adult patients.

With drugs designed to attack tumors’ DDR network already transforming the treatment of other cancers, like ovarian and breast cancer, this strategy needs to be quickly and expertly tested for patients with a brain tumor.

About the Consortium

To bring forth a concerted effort to advance this strategy, NBTS has formed a consortium of leading experts in both pediatric and adult neuro-oncology research to go “all-in” in pursuit of making the promise of this approach a reality for patients.

The consortium will test different drugs in the laboratory, share data, and then bring the most promising drugs forward to evaluate in clinical trials that match the right drugs with the right patients. The consortium is made up of a diverse team of world-class researchers from across the United States with unparalleled expertise and the experience needed to rapidly develop and advance these drugs into clinical trials.

NBTS strongly believes that experimental drugs and treatments discovered and advanced by this consortium have the potential to revolutionize the treatment landscape for patients with brain tumors.

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