It's International Brain Tumour Awareness Week. There are more than 150 types of brain tumours.
PRIMARY, METASTATIC, BENIGN, MALIGNANT:
🧠 Primary brain tumours originate in the brain.
🧠 Metastatic” tumours originate elsewhere in the body and spread to the brain.
🧠 Primary brain tumours can be benign (non-cancerous) or malignant (cancerous).
🧠 Malignant brain tumours account for 38% of all primary brain tumours.
Each type has its own symptoms, life-altering impact, varying options for treatment, and outcomes.
A malignant brain tumour prognosis remains grim. These tumours tend to grow quickly, invade normal (healthy) brain, and spread to other parts of the brain. The overall 5-year relative survival for malignant brain tumours is approximately 5%.
For brain cancers in children, adolescents, young adults, and adults, there are very few clinical trials, experimental therapies are exceedingly difficult to access, and options for effective therapies require decades to progress.
Increased investment in research, medical therapies, clinical trials, and neuro-surgical technologies will continue to lead to better outcomes for patients and give clinicians more options to help their patients.
Brain Cancer Canada invests 100% of its net proceeds towards brain cancer research and neuro-surgical technologies.
Here are a couple of examples of how BCC’S investments have advanced medical care for brain cancer patients:
1) A next-generation genomic sequencer acquired by
@StMichaelsFdn, the first of its kind in Canada, benefits patients with all tumour types (benign and malignant). Genomic sequencers help reveal details about the biology of a disease, how it originates and progresses, which then leads to understanding how medical therapies might be able to intervene.
@SunnyD_UT
2) Preclinical studies at
@SickKidsNews for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), a pediatric brain cancer, which was translated into the “first in human” clinical trial for children with this fatal brainstem tumour.
@JamesRutka
Join us this week, as we work to raise awareness about the urgent need for brain cancer research!
#braintumourawarenessweek #MalignantBrainTumours