Understanding brain cancer and exploiting its vulnerabilities

Brain cancer is one of the most devastating neoplasms affecting both children and adults. Its dismal prognosis has for long-time discouraged research in this area. However, in the last 10-15 years remarkable progress has been made in our understanding of brain cancer biology, thus showing promise for the identification of new ways to treat these tumors towards the improvement of patients' survival and quality of life. This Thematic Issue on Brain cancers offers a much needed and timely critical overview of the fundamental discoveries in this area of research and which of those are more promising for effective translation into the clinic. Critically, many Reviews from this Issue also provide discussion points on why the field has not progressed as much as it had hoped to. It is important to emphasize however that we are living in exciting times with regards to our ability to translate fundamental findings into the clinic thanks to the enormous technological advances facilitating the study of cancer genomes and the development of new drugs or repurposing existing agents.