The Developmental Research Program of the MSKCC Brain Tumor SPORE program is designed to provide funding opportunities for projects that are not ready for funding by other peer reviewed mechanisms. These projects may be highly focused and limited in scope, or they may not have sufficient data to apply for R01 level funding. Our goal is to fund several such projects for two years and allow the generation of preliminary data to make these projects competitive for NIH funding. Alternatively, scientific progress of the main Research Projects in the SPORE are monitored and potentially could lose funding during the period of the grant. If this happens, an existing Developmental Project will be chosen to fill that funding opportunity. The process of deciding which Developmental Projects to fund, whether Research Projects should be terminated, and if so which Developmental Project will be chosen to replace it, will be carried out by a combination of the Internal and External Advisory Committees. The External Advisory Committee is composed of senior investigators at outside institutions while the Internal Advisory Committee is composed of senior investigators and administrators at MSKCC. The importance of this program to the MSKCC community is illustrated by the additional funding support that will be provided by MSKCC in addition to the amount budgeted for in the SPORE. In this section we provide brief descriptions of four projects that span the range from basic molecular science to translational research to pure clinical research. These projects illustrate the breadth of potential projects that could be chosen from for funding by the combined advisory committees.