NCI Halts Funding for Consortium Conducting Trials on Childhood Brain Cancers

The NCI, or National Cancer Institute, a federal body, has revealed that it will no longer fund a program that has been running for 26 years focused on advancing clinical studies on children with brain cancers. 

The group, Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, was founded in 1999 to bring together 15 academic institutions and pediatric hospitals within the United States and Canada to conduct early-stage clinical trials (Phase 1 and Phase 2). This consortium has a record of conducting trials aimed at exploring new therapies, strategies for delivering radiation treatment, and finding new technologies to deliver treatments specifically focused on pediatric patients. It has also worked with the COG (Children’s Oncology Group) to move the early-stage trials into advanced-stage clinical studies. 

The curtain is now being drawn on the work of this group after the NCI communicated that the consortium will not have another opportunity to seek any other five-year funding to continue doing its work after March next year. 

An HHS spokesperson explained that the federal department had reviewed the evolving landscape of brain cancer research and drug development for pediatric patients and had made the decision to switch the funding that was going to the PBTC to another group dubbed PEP-CTN. This group has 42 hospitals in its network, with half of that number being categorized as core centers located in the U.S., while the other 21 aren’t core centers and are located in the U.S., Australia and Canada. Core centers participate in all studies while noncore centers participate in some of the trials conducted. 

The NCI plans to either continue supporting any ongoing trials by the PBTC or transfer those studies to PEP-CTN. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis for the ongoing studies. 

These changes come at a time when there is uncertainty about funding to the NIH. The President has proposed that NIH funding be reduced by $18 billion for the fiscal year 2026 but a subcommittee in Senate is instead proposing that the current funding be bumped up by an additional $400 million instead of being reduced. 

Keith Desserich, the PBTC Foundation’s president, expressed disappointment about the discontinuation of funding to the consortium. He added that they had hoped that their performance record of completing 42 clinical trials and helping at least 2,200 patients would have been reason enough to keep supporting their activities. 

Such discontinuations of critical funding for studies on pediatric brain cancers make the work of for-profit entities like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) all the more important since these companies remain focused on channeling their resources to the quest to bring to market new therapies for pediatric brain tumors so that more patients can access life-saving treatments. 

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CNSP 

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