Working Together Towards Cures
Our partnership with CBTN is focused on empowering research through the gift of post-mortem tissue donation partnered with global sharing of tissue and data.
What is the Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN)?
The Children’s Brain Tumor Network is dedicated to driving innovative discovery, pioneering new treatments and accelerating open science to improve health for all children and young adults diagnosed with a brain tumor.
By accelerating the pace of translational research and the discovery of new treatments, we are a global community with the shared goal to save children and young adults from brain tumors.
GFAC coordinates autopsy collections across multiple pediatric brain/CNS tumor diagnoses at each of the seven Centers of Excellence. GFAC Tissue Navigators coordinate shipment to the CBTN, ensuring that tissue is not simply “banked” but actively being used to help unravel tumor biology.
Our Partnership with CBTN
Providing a Complete Picture of Childhood Brain Tumors
Childhood brain tumors evolve over time. Pairing both tumor and normal tissue samples from a patient allows researchers to compare the molecular changes that occur as healthy cells become cancerous.
There are several ways samples may be used:
- Molecular and genomic data may be gathered
- Pre-clinical models may be developed
- Data may be generated for use by CBTN’s cloud-based research platforms
By matching these biospecimen samples with a patient’s associated longitudinal clinical and molecular data, researchers can build a more complete picture of each tumor, which could be key to helping future patients.
