For families facing high-grade glioma (HGG), the deadliest childhood brain cancer, the diagnosis often feels like a storm: dark, fast, and overwhelming. Treatments are limited, harmful, and too often ineffective. For more than 40 years, progress has been slow, treatments have remained painfully toxic, and children have borne the weight of a system that simply did not have the tools, data, or alignment it needed to change the forecast.
But this moment is different. And for the first time ever, thanks to the influence, funding, and relentless advocacy of Bridge To A Cure Foundation, the entire pediatric brain tumor community is coming together behind a series of unified goals:
- Drive shared data collection, access, and harmonization
- Cure high-grade glioma
- Pursue non-toxic treatments
- Leverage the full power of data and AI to get there faster
This is the culmination of the Bridge To A Cure mission from day one: to unite and transform the childhood cancer community’s approach to research with the goal of cutting the childhood cancer death rate by 50% by 2030.
Why HGG Has Been So Hard to Cure — and Why That’s Changing
High-grade glioma moves quickly. It infiltrates healthy brain tissue, resists nearly all available therapies, and evolves fast enough to outrun scientific understanding. For years, researchers lacked the visibility needed to track the disease’s behavior, not because they lacked dedication, but because they lacked something fundamental: shared, high-quality data.
Each hospital held only a few cases. Each research center saw only fragments. As a result, discovery moved slowly, and families waited under a sky that didn’t seem to clear.
Thanks to the combined momentum of our foundation’s advocacy and the Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN), that reality has shifted. And by bringing dozens of childhood cancer foundations and more than 35 pediatric institutions together and uniting their data, imaging, biospecimens, and expertise, CBTN has created the largest collaborative pediatric brain cancer community in the world, and with it, new clarity, new insights, and new momentum.
This shared ecosystem has set the stage for something once unimaginable: real insight, real collaboration, and real possibility.
The BTAC–CBTN Partnership: Preparing 900 Datasets for a Brighter Future
Among the most extraordinary achievements of our network is the contribution made by 900 children with HGG, whose families shared clinical records, imaging, and tumor data in the hope that no other family would weather the storm alone.
To honor their courage, Bridge To A Cure Foundation is funding the work needed to prepare these 900 datasets to FDA gold-standard quality, the essential step for:
- powering new AI-driven research,
- supporting regulatory submissions,
- designing smarter, safer clinical trials, and
- moving toward less-toxic treatments that protect childhood.
This work turns raw information into a stable foundation where new discoveries can finally take root.
Bridge To A Cure is committed to completing the HGG dataset validation within a single year—an ambitious yet essential goal. By the end of 2026, this data will fully power the RADIANT AI pediatric research platform, enabling scientists to detect patterns no human eye could see and accelerating the development of safer, more effective therapies children urgently need.
A Gathering of Leaders: The SU2C High-Grade Glioma Summit
This January marks a pivotal shift. Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) will host the first-ever national pediatric High-Grade Glioma Summit, bringing together leaders in oncology, genomics, AI, and clinical innovation.
This transformative Summit reflects the growing momentum across the entire field, shaped in part by years of Bridge To A Cure’s advocacy, coalition-building, and insistence that the community align around curing pediatric glioblastoma. The call for unity, shared data, and non-toxic treatments, championed consistently by Bridge To A Cure, helped create the conditions for a gathering of this scale to become a national priority. Summit attendees will come together, in person, to meet around these shared goals and collaborate on ways to achieve them.
Bridge To A Cure President Robert (Bob) Martin has been invited to join as a panelist, representing:
- the voice of families,
- the need for scientific collaboration,
- the promise of data-driven research, and
- the urgency of developing non-toxic treatments.
Bob’s leadership ensures the movement to cure HGG remains centered on the children who need it most and the families who have already endured far too many storms.
2026: A Break in the Clouds
Across childhood brain cancer research, the weather pattern is changing:
- Data is no longer siloed.
- Scientists are no longer working alone.
- AI is no longer a distant promise — it’s becoming a real tool.
- Families’ contributions are finally being honored through action.
- Institutions are aligning under shared momentum.
These are rays of light that are bursting through years of cloudy progress. And as the validated HGG dataset comes online in 2026, paired with Radiant AI insights and guided by collaborations strengthened through the SU2C summit, we approach a horizon that has remained out of reach for far too long: the possibility of safer, smarter, more effective treatments for children with high-grade glioma.
How You Can Help
Preparing the HGG dataset is not optional. It’s the foundational step that makes every discovery possible. And now, thanks to a $50,000 matching gift from a generous anonymous donor, every gift through December 31 is doubled.
This funding drives a new dawn for kids with cancer through:
- FDA-grade data validation
- AI-enabled research through RADIANT
- Collaborative scientific alignment heading into 2026
- BTAC’s advocacy at the SU2C summit
- And progress toward the non-toxic treatments children urgently need
Your support doesn’t just fund a project. It brings light into a space that has lived under clouds for far too long.
A Brighter Horizon for Children
We cannot change the past, but together we are reshaping the future, one dataset, one discovery, one act of generosity at a time. And families who have endured the darkest days are beginning to see the possibility of a brighter tomorrow.
As we enter 2026, hope is no longer just an idea — it’s our direction.
Double your impact. Fulfill the promise.
Donate through December 31: bit.ly/BTAC-double-impact
