Sponsors (66)
Official title: To advance research to achieve medical breakthroughs in brain tumor treatment and improve awareness and adequacy of specialized cancer and brain tumor care.
Introduced April 9, 2025 by Brian K. Fitzpatrick · Last progress April 9, 2025
The bill directs targeted federal funding, data-sharing, outreach, and pilot programs to accelerate brain tumor research, trial access, and survivorship care — improving options for patients but increasing federal spending and administrative burdens while posing privacy, equity, and clinical‑safety tradeoffs.
People with brain tumors (adult and pediatric) gain substantially expanded, targeted research funding and programs (including multi‑institutional glioblastoma and CAR–T efforts) that accelerate development of new therapies.
Patients and families get better access to clinical trials and biomarker testing through clearer inclusion approaches, outreach to rural and high‑risk communities, and increased trial awareness, improving treatment options and chances to enroll.
Researchers, clinicians, and academic centers gain improved resources and tools — searchable NIH biospecimen catalogs, stable funding for preclinical/early‑phase studies, and collaborative infrastructures — that speed translation of lab findings into trials.
Taxpayers face increased federal spending (multiple authorizations totaling tens of millions per year across programs) to fund research, outreach, and pilots without fully offsetting savings.
Hospitals, research centers, and investigators will incur new administrative and compliance burdens (reporting biospecimen collections, applying for pilots/grants), with risks that funding could be withheld for violations, disrupting research or services.
Concentrating funds on glioblastoma and cellular immunotherapies could divert NIH resources and investigator attention away from other cancers or research areas, reducing support for some conditions.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Establishes NIH/NCI research networks, reporting for NIH‑funded brain tumor biospecimens, outreach and survivorship pilot grants, and FDA guidance to expand trial access, with new funding authorizations.
Creates new NIH/NCI programs, reporting rules, grants, and outreach to accelerate research, clinical trials, treatments, and survivor care for brain tumors and glioblastoma. Requires public reporting of NIH-funded brain tumor biospecimen collections, funds multi‑institutional research networks and team science for cellular immunotherapies, seeds demonstration grants for outreach and survivor care, and directs the FDA to issue guidance to limit unnecessary exclusion of brain tumor patients from clinical trials.