Twelve institutions across the United States and Canada formed a collaborative designed to improve long-term survival and quality of life for patients with malignant brain tumors.

University of Florida Health will lead the ReMission Alliance Against Brain Tumors, which will create an unprecedented research community to advance brain tumor clinical trials and immunotherapy research.

“We are proud to lead the ReMission Alliance and are emboldened by the strength of our institutions as a united force,” David R. Nelson, MD, senior vice president for health affairs at University of Florida and president of UF Health, said in a press release. “We all recognize the dire need to greatly improve treatment options for these patients and we’re confident that a team science approach spearheaded by researchers of this caliber will get us there.”

Alliance directors are Duane A. Mitchell, MD, PhD,and William A. Friedman, MD, co-directors of Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy at University of Florida.

Other participating institutions and principal investigators are:

Children’s of Alabama — Girish Dhall, MD;

Children’s National Hospital — Eugene Hwang, MD, and Roger Packer, MD;

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — Keith L. Ligon, MD, PhD;

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — David Reardon, MD;

Duke University Medical Center — John Sampson, MD, PhD;

Nationwide Children’s Hospital — Mohamed Shebl AbdelBaki, MD;

Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute — Robert Wechsler-Reya, PhD;

Stanford Medicine — Gerald Grant, MD, and Sanjiv Gambhir, MD, PhD;

The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University — Stephen Johnston, PhD;

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center — Amy Heimberger, MD;

University of Toronto Hospital for Sick Children — Michael D. Taylor, MD, PhD.

“The group of institutions and researchers that form the ReMission Alliance Against Brain Tumors constitute, to my knowledge, the largest collective effort focused specifically on advancing safe and effective immunotherapy for children and adults with brain cancer,” Mitchell said in the release. “We’re honored to work alongside these talented investigators and believe that this type of collaboration will create unprecedented momentum in our effort to improve the lives of those suffering from brain tumors.”