New horizons in treating breast cancer
TRANSBIG was a European Union (EU)-funded project coordinated by the Breast International Group (BIG) to promote collaboration in translational breast cancer research. The key to individualising cancer treatment lies in finding a way to quickly “translate” the discoveries about cancer biology made by laboratory scientists into tools that physicians can use to help make decisions about the way to treat patients. This area of medicine that links laboratory work to the treatment of patients is called “translational” research.
TRANSBIG’s main focus was an international clinical trial known as MINDACT (Microarray for Node Negative Disease may avoid Chemotherapy), which is managed by the European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and has enrolled more than 6,600 women in 9 countries.
MINDACT compares the traditional method of assessing a tumour’s aggressiveness with a laboratory test using microarray technology known as Mammaprint®, a 70-gene prognostic signature, which as the name suggests, analyses the activity levels of 70 genes inside the tumour. The results of MINDACT are expected to show whether new tools like this can improve the traditional method of deciding if chemotherapy can be avoided after surgery.
Avoiding chemotherapy would significantly reduce patients' exposure to toxicity and potential harmful long-term side-effects, while reducing the cost of breast cancer therapy and its burden on European healthcare systems.
“TRANSBIG contributed to tackling the fragmentation in breast cancer translational research by strengthening the relationships between leading European researchers in the field. Moreover, it led to the successful launch of what is viewed as one of Europe’s most innovative breast cancer trials of the past decade,” says Fatima Cardoso, TRANSBIG Scientific Director.
“A major outcome of MINDACT is its collection of biological materials and enormous pool of clinical data, which will be available for use by the larger scientific community after the primary results have been published,” adds Cardoso.
The primary results of MINDACT are not available until 2015 but it is expected they will support the view that adding technology to traditional assessment methods will enable a better selection of patients that actually do not need chemotherapy.
Breast Cancer Day - 24 October 2014