We are fully aware of the enormous amount of breast cancer conferences currently being offered all over the world. Still, after almost 6 years of preparatory work, publications and dedicated sessions during national and international breast cancer meetings, we felt that it was the right time to launch a scientific and educational event entirely and exclusively dedicated to advanced breast cancer. Survival of these patients is increasing and their quality of life is also improving but these progresses have been painfully slow. Management of advanced di G22sease has suffered from the lack of strong international collaboration in both clinical and translational research that could lead to faster advances and evidence-based standards of care. As a consequence, both caregivers and patients often feel lost in a labyrinth of so many different expert opinions and scattered guidelines efforts. The European School of Oncology (ESO) has established a Task Force on Metastatic Breast Cancer in 2004 and since then has continued to support this effort, mostly in collaboration with EBCC (the European Breast Cancer Conference), ESMO (European Society of Medical Oncology) and the JNCI. The journal The Breast (IF 2.155) has also given great priority to the topic and has received positive feedback from the community. There is an urgent need to develop strong, standardized, scientifically sound guidelines that can be applied internationally. Implementation of high quality guidelines in the early breast cancer setting has had a proven significant impact in the survival of these patients. We have come together with the ambitious aim of providing advanced breast cancer patients with the same benefit! Please join us in this endeavor to improve the lives of advanced breast cancer patients, who would benefit greatly by this focused activity. This course has been listed as one of the deliverables from the EU FP7-funded EurocanPlatform project. For information on EurocanPlatform visit: http://www.eurocanplatform.eu