DMG-ACT — Laying the Foundation for an Adaptive Global Trial

DMG-ACT (Diffuse Midline Glioma – Adaptive Combinatorial Therapy) is a global, multidisciplinary initiative transforming how children with DIPG and DMG are treated. Built on the belief that no single therapy will defeat these heterogeneous and aggressive tumors, DMG-ACT brings together world-leading clinical and preclinical scientists and institutions to rapidly identify, test, and advance the most promising treatment combinations for children battling these cancers.

In 2020, ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation made an early and strategic commitment to the Diffuse Midline Glioma Adaptive Combinatorial Trial (DMG-ACT), supporting a bold new vision for how DIPG/DMG research could be conducted. At the time, therapeutic progress had been stalled for decades, with traditional single-agent trials failing to meaningfully improve outcomes for children.

ChadTough’s support helped establish the clinical and scientific infrastructure required to launch an adaptive platform trial, —one capable of testing multiple therapies, learning in real time, and evolving as new data emerged. This early funding enabled core elements of DMG-ACT, including trial coordination, biospecimen collection pipelines, and the correlative science framework that would later become central to the initiative’s success. ChadTough remains the key philanthropic partner to continuously support DMG-ACT’s infrastructure since its inception.