15th Milan Breast Cancer Conference

Dr Marci Colleoni talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 in Milan about the threshold for the inclusion of adjuvant chemotherapy in luminal breast cancer. Dr Colleoni discusses trials that will take place in order to determine an answer to this question as well as others regarding adjuvant treatment and recurrence.

Dr Andrea De Censi talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 about selective oestrogen receptor modulators (SERMS) and tamoxifen, as well as a number of phase III double blind trials. Dr De Censi discusses how there are very effective drugs for breast cancer prevention, but the medical community is still largely unaware of this.

Dr Alan Coates talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 about the various subtypes of breast cancer, such as luminal A, luminbal B, basal and HER , and prognostic test for each of these subtypes.

Dr Christiane Kuhl talks to ecancer at MBCC about how breast cancer MRI appears to be the most promising tool for screening, as opposed to mammography. MRI offers the highest sensitivity of all methods right now and also offers a view into tumour physiology.

Dr Danuta Lichosik talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 about the important role of the operating theatre nurse and the new technologies in the field. This multi-discipline role requires a large amount of training in a wide range of fields, including robotic surgery.

Dr Fedro Peccatori talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 about the patient’s autonomy, reproductive autonomy and the difficulty of sharing information between physicians. Ultimately, the physician and the patient need to make difficult decisions about how treatment will occur.

Dr Clifford Hudis talks to ecancer at MBCC 15 about triple negative breast cancer and the need to develop subtypes for this specific type of breast cancer in order to develop new targeted therapies. This is already being done with gene expression profiling and an example where it has been successful is with androgen receptors and treating with the prostate cancer drug bicalutamide.