May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month

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

Doctors will diagnose cancers of the brain or central nervous system in about 24,820 people in the United States in 2025, 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 this country. 

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.

To read more about how this happens, see “Treating Brain Metastases” in the AACR’s Cancer Today magazine.

The NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program estimates that some 18,330 people in the United States will die from these cancers in 2025.

one person’s story

When Michael Methner was just 2½ years old, his parents noticed a subtle but persistent nystagmus, which is an involuntary eye movement. Eventually, an MRI revealed a brain tumor known as glioma. After years of trying different treatments, Michael finally saw real progress after a new molecularly targeted treatment, tovorafenib (Ojemda), shrunk his tumor in half. Today, Michael is a vibrant 11-year-old, full of life and energy. Read more about his story in the 2024 AACR Cancer Progress Report.

More on Brain Cancer Research

At the AACR Annual Meeting 2024, researchers presented updates on the most promising treatments for brain cancer that could become available in the coming years. Read more about these presentations on Cancer Research Catalyst.

What the AACR Is Currently Doing in Brain Cancer Research

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

  • Adham Halaoui, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, received a 2024 AACR-Merck Cancer Disparities Research Fellowship for his work exploring how sex-specific chromatin remodeling drives tumorigenesis in glioblastoma.
  • Nika N. Danial, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, received a 2024 AACR-MPM Oncology Charitable Foundation Transformative Cancer Research Grant to help her study the identification of lipid-targeted molecular regulators of H3K27M glioma growth.
  • Ola Rominiyi, BSc, MB ChB, MRCS, PhD, of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, was granted a 2024 AACR-Novocure Career Development Award for Cancer Research for his work evaluating the use of tumor-treating fields (TTFields) and DNA repair inhibitor combinations as a potential treatment for high-grade gliomas.
  • Anita B. Hjelmeland, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was awarded a 2024 AACR-Novocure Tumor Treating Fields Research Grant as she studies the use of TTFields as a treatment for glioblastoma.
  • Miriam Ratliff, DrMed, Dipl-Biol, of Heidelberg University in Germany, also received a 2024 AACR-Novocure Tumor Treating Fields Research Grant for her work focused on the effect of TTFields on glioma networks using integrated multiomics and advanced imaging techniques.

for more information

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