Boston, MA, Nov. 13, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS), the largest nonprofit dedicated to the brain tumor community in the United States, today announced that its funded research, programs, initiatives, and executives will be featured in 19 talks, oral presentations, and poster sessions at the 23rd Annual Scientific Meeting and Education Day of the Society for Neuro-Oncology, taking place Thursday, November 15 through Sunday, November 18 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) is the premier North American organization for clinicians, basic scientists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals whose focus is central nervous system tumors in children and adults, and its annual meeting is the largest and preeminent scientific conference dedicated specifically to brain tumors.
Highlights of NBTS’ impact and leadership in the neuro-oncology field to be featured during this year’s conference include:
- NBTS Chief Executive Officer, David Arons, and Board of Directors Member, Liz Salmi, will serve as panelists for Thursday’s Education Day session on “Improving Patient Participation in Clinical Trials.”
- Mr. Arons will lead a discussion on the impact of the recently passed Right to Try law on the neuro-oncology field during Thursday’s Education Day Town Hall on “Hot Topics in Neuro-Oncology,” which will also include information from NBTS’ June 2018 Research Roundtable on drug repurposing.
- Mr. Arons will co-chair a special session on Friday, “Factors Impacting Clinical Trial Accrual,” and present results from NBTS’ recent survey on patient attitudes, perceptions, and participation in clinical trials, as well as co-present “patient and community factors.”
- In Friday’s “Concurrent Session 3A – Immunology – Preclinical and Clinical I,” work funded in part by NBTS’ Defeat GBM Research Collaborative (Defeat GBM) will feature in Dr. Robert Prins presentation, “Neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 immunotherapy promotes intratumoral and systemic immune responses in recurrent glioblastoma.”
- Members of Dr. Frank Furnari’s lab will present on Defeat GBM-funded research on targeting therapeutic vulnerability in PTEN-deficient brain tumors (Friday Sunrise Session and Friday evening E-Talk).
- Five researchers funded by NBTS’ Oligodendroglioma Community Research Fund will present work on the Glioma Longitudinal Analysis Consortium (Dr. Roel Verhaak), The International Low-Grade Glioma Registry (Dr. Elizabeth Claus), "An integrative model of cellular states and genetics for glioblastoma" (Dr. Mario Suva), and three studies related to the functional characterization of germline risk variants in glioma (Labs of Drs. Robert Jenkins and Daniel Lachance), respectively.
- Mr. Arons will receive SNO’s inaugural “Neuro-Oncology Community Service Award” during Saturday’s Plenary session.
In total, work support by NBTS’ Defeat GBM, Defeat Pediatric Brain Tumors Research Collaborative, Oligodendroglioma Community Research Fund, Clinical Trial Endpoints Initiative, Research Roundtable, Public Policy Advocacy, and patient and care-partner education and preparedness programs will feature across 13 oral presentations, three panel discussions, and three posters.
National Brain Tumor will also serve as a Platinum Sponsor of the SNO Annual Meeting.
About National Brain Tumor Society
National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) is the largest nonprofit organization in the U.S. dedicated to the brain tumor community. We are fiercely committed to finding better treatments and driving rapid progress toward a cure for brain tumors. We drive a multi-faceted and thoughtful approach to aggressively influence and fund strategic research, as well as advocate for public policy changes, in order to achieve the greatest impact, results, and progress for brain tumor patients. Thanks to the generous support of thousands of brain tumor community members, NBTS has directly funded groundbreaking discoveries, programs, clinical trials, and policy initiatives. To learn more visit www.braintumor.org
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