New translational research platform launched to study rare cancers The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard today announced the launch of a new translational research platform to study rare cancers and develop a first-of-its-kind resource for the scientific community. The joint initiative will create a catalog of rare cancer models and provide a data resource to accelerate the identification of therapeutics to treat patients diagnosed with rare tumor types. The National Cancer Institute defines a rare cancer as one with fewer than 40,000 new cases per year. Cumulatively, rare cancers account for roughly one-quarter of all cancer cases and cancer deaths, but the low incidence of each different type of rare tumor presents a significant challenge to efforts to identify effective therapeutic approaches.