May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month

Please join with AACR to find better ways to prevent and treat brain cancer

Doctors will diagnose cancers of the brain or central nervous system in about 24,740 people in the United States in 2026, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These cancers make up a portion of more than 94,000 brain tumors (including benign tumors) that occur each year in the U.S. 

There are many types of brain and spinal cord tumors. The tumors result from the abnormal growth of cells and may be either benign or malignant. Benign brain and spinal cord tumors grow and press on nearby areas of the brain. Normally, they rarely spread into other tissues.

Malignant brain and spinal cord tumors are likely to grow quickly and spread into other brain tissue. 

Unfortunately, when a tumor grows into or presses on an area of the brain, it may stop that part of the brain from functioning normally. Both benign and malignant brain tumors produce signs and symptoms and need treatment.

Tumors that start in the brain are called primary brain tumors. Primary brain tumors may spread to other parts of the brain or to the spine. But they rarely spread to other parts of the body.

Metastatic brain tumors

Many tumors found in the brain actually started somewhere else in the body and spread to the brain. These are called metastatic brain tumors, and they are more common than primary brain tumors. In fact, about half of metastatic brain tumors are from lung cancer. Even after these tumors spread to the brain, they are still called lung cancer, or wherever they originated.

The NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program estimates that some 18,350 people in the United States will die from these cancers in 2026.

Personal Stories of BrAIN cANCER

Alex Hepner was diagnosed with low-grade glioma, a slow-growing type of brain cancer, when he was 24 years old. “I stopped dreaming about the future before I’d even had the chance to start,” Alex said. While treatment for low-grade gliomas had traditionally been limited to surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, a newly approved targeted therapy, vorasidenib, had showed remarkable promise in clinical trials. Alex began treatment with vorasidenib on October 28, 2024, and has experienced minimal side effects so far. “This drug gave me hope. It let me start dreaming again” he said. Read his story in the AACR Cancer Progress Report.

When Chenia Lloyd-Gascho was 8, he was diagnosed with Li–Fraumeni syndrome—a hereditary condition that dramatically increases the risk of developing cancer. Due to this diagnosis, Chenia undergoes regular blood tests and MRIs to monitor for cancer. At 14, one of the tests found something, and a biopsy later confirmed he had a grade 2 astrocytoma, a type of slow-growing glioma. Initially, the tumor was treated with laser ablation, a procedure that uses focused heat to destroy tumor tissue. The recovery process was grueling, which left Chenia’s mother hoping for a new treatment option that wouldn’t require doctors to cut into her child’s head again. Around the time of Chenia’s 17th birthday, he was approved to start vorasidenib. “This medication didn’t just change my health—it changed how I think about my future,” Chenia said. Read his story in the AACR Pediatric Cancer Progress Report.

More on Brain Cancer Research

Diffuse midline glioma (DMG) is an aggressive, fast-growing cancer that develops in the brain or spinal cord and has an expected survival of less than a year. These tumors, which are diagnosed in about 200 to 400 children a year in the United States, are typically inoperable and don’t generally respond to chemotherapy. However, in August 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first targeted therapy for DMG. Dordaviprone (Modeyso) was granted accelerated approval for adults and children ages 1 and older who have DMGs with an H3 K27M mutation. Learn more about this new treatment option in AACR’s magazine Cancer Today.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a type of treatment in which a patient’s own T cells are extracted, re-engineered to target a certain protein on cancer cells, and infused back into the patient. Currently, this type of therapy is only approved to treat various blood cancers, including pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. But groundbreaking clinical trials are providing early insights into the potential safety and anticancer activity of these cell therapies in children with brain and central nervous system cancers. Learn more on Cancer Research Catalyst, the official AACR blog.

What AACR Is Doing in Brain Cancer Research

Every three years, the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Brain Cancer brings together a multidisciplinary community of researchers and clinicians to explore some of the latest advances in brain cancer research. The 2026 meeting, held in March, was chaired by Stephen J. Bagley, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania; Michelle Monje, MD, PhD, of Stanford University; and Mario L. Suva, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of MIT. Over the course of this conference, researchers discussed the neuroscience of gliomas, advances in neuro-immuno-oncology, cellular therapies for nervous system tumors, next-generation diagnostics and biomarkers, strategies to solve tumor heterogeneity using spatial and 3D genomics, and much more.

The AACR also supports several researchers for their work in the field of brain cancers:  

for more information

Please see AACR’s page on brain and spinal cord tumors, which includes information on potential treatments.