BIG-NCTN

A large international research effort

Breast Cancer Research Foundation logo

Global collaboration to

We believe that global collaboration is crucial to making significant advances in breast cancer research: reducing unnecessary duplication of effort, sharing data, enabling collaboration of scientists across borders, contributing to the faster development of better treatments, and increasing the likelihood of cures for patients.

Thanks to the generous and exclusive support of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, BIG and the NCI National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) – the latter a network of major US and Canadian-based research groups supported by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) – have been meeting annually and in topic-specific working groups since 2005.

advance breast cancer research

Together they identify difficult and unresolved aspects of breast cancer treatment and care, focus on research areas not supported by the pharmaceutical industry, and collaborate to set up large international research programmes that always put patients’ need first.

BIG and NCTN experts are working together in topic-specific working groups throughout the year, and they meet annually in June. This collaboration was initiated by Martine Piccart and William Wood, co-Chairs of the first meetings, in partnership with Larry Norton (BCRF) and JoAnne Zujewski (NCI).

AURORA

Better understand the evolution of metastatic breast cancer.

Male Breast Cancer Programme

Characterising male breast cancer in order to improve treatments.

POSITIVE

Pregnancy outcomes and safety of interrupting endocrine therapy for young women with ER+ breast cancer.

Together, BIG and NCTN strive to improve the care and cure rates of patients with breast cancer through international collaboration

Year Title Authors Reference
2020
Road Map to Safe and Well-Designed De-escalation Trials of Systemic Adjuvant Therapy for Solid Tumors
Piccart M, Hilbers F, Bliss J et al.
2017
Male breast cancer precursor lesions: analysis of the EORTC 10085/TBCRC/BIG/NABCG International Male Breast Cancer Program
Doebar SC, Slaets L, Cardoso F et al.
2017
Pathological characterisation of male breast cancer: Results of the EORTC 10085/TBCRC/BIG/NABCG International Male Breast Cancer Program
Vermeulen MA, Slaets L, Cardoso F et al.
2015
Recommendations for standardized pathological characterization of residual disease for neoadjuvant clinical trials of breast cancer by the BIG-NABCG collaboration
Bossuyt V, Provenzano E, Symmans WF et al.
2015
Standardization of pathologic evaluation and reporting of post-neoadjuvant specimens in clinical trials of breast cancer: Recommendations from an international working group
Provenzano E, Bossuyt V, Viale G et al.
2015
Defining Breast Cancer Intrinsic Subtypes by Quantitative Receptor Expression
Cheang MC, Martin M, Nielsen TO et al.
2015
An international study to increase concordance in Ki67 scoring
Polley MY, Leung SC, Gao D et al.
2013
An International Ki67 Reproducibility Study
Polley MC, Leung SCY, McShane LM et al.
2013
Perceptions and needs of women with metastatic breast cancer: A focus on clinical trials
Nahleh ZA, Lin NU, Wolff AC et al.
2012
A common language in neoadjuvant breast cancer clinical trials: proposals for standard definitions and endpoints
Fumagalli D, Bedard PL, Nahleh Z et al.
2011
Pregnancy after breast cancer: if you wish, ma'am
Pagani O, Partridge A, Korde et al.
2011
Proposals for uniform collection of biospecimens from neoadjuvant breast cancer clinical trials: timing and specimen types
Loi S, Symmans WF, Bartlett J et al.
2008
Recommendations for collection and handling of specimens from group breast cancer clinical trials
Leyland‐Jones BR, Ambrosone CB, Bartlett JMS et al.