The Third International Conference on Gliomatosis Cerebri (GC) was held in Barcelona on September 22-23, 2019 at the Saint Joan de Deu Hospital. The medical team responsible for the conference consisted of Dr. Andres Morales of Saint Juan de Deu Hospital, Barcelona; Dr. Katherine Warren od Dana-Farber, Boston and Prof. Christof Kramm from University Medical Center, Göttingen and was attended by doctors, clinicians and researchers from various institutions around the world. The conference, as always, was sponsored by some of the family foundations, of which The Rudy A Menon Foundation is one. The focus of the discussion amongst the professionals was to come to a common understanding on the nature of Gliomatosis Cerebri and to define whether it was a disease or a manifestation of certain brain tumors. it was encouraging to note that the tissue samples available had increased substantially over the last two years. There was also agreement on sharing the data between the scientists across geographies to facilitate more efficient research. The family foundations agreed upon the need to push for more global visibility across the multiple institutions and this was conveyed to the professional team. Different options to collaborate and make this happen were jointly discussed. Inspired by the PhD studentship program launched by our Foundation, a number of other foundations agreed to create a grant to fund specific research on GC. A number of committees were set up to pursue different initiatives for the next two years. The researchers presented the work they were doing with the funding from the foundations and also expressed their gratitude and appreciation to the families for working together to find a cure for GC. It was summarized by them by saying “You are not just fund raisers…you are partners, inspiration, the ‘why’ that drives us”.
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