BIG-NCTN

A large international research effort

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

Male Breast Cancer Programme

POSITIVE

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.	Journal of Clinical Oncology
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.	Modern Pathology
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.	European Journal of Cancer
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.	Annals of Oncology
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.	Modern Pathology
2015	Defining Breast Cancer Intrinsic Subtypes by Quantitative Receptor Expression	Cheang MC, Martin M, Nielsen TO et al.	The Oncologist
2015	An international study to increase concordance in Ki67 scoring	Polley MY, Leung SC, Gao D et al.	Modern Pathology
2013	An International Ki67 Reproducibility Study	Polley MC, Leung SCY, McShane LM et al.	Journal of the National Cancer Institute
2013	Perceptions and needs of women with metastatic breast cancer: A focus on clinical trials	Nahleh ZA, Lin NU, Wolff AC et al.	The Breast
2012	A common language in neoadjuvant breast cancer clinical trials: proposals for standard definitions and endpoints	Fumagalli D, Bedard PL, Nahleh Z et al.	The Lancet Oncology
2011	Pregnancy after breast cancer: if you wish, ma'am	Pagani O, Partridge A, Korde et al.	Breast Cancer Research and Treatment
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.	The Lancet Oncology
2008	Recommendations for collection and handling of specimens from group breast cancer clinical trials	Leyland‐Jones BR, Ambrosone CB, Bartlett JMS et al.	Journal of Clinical Oncology