This article has been developed following, and drawing on the content of, a satellite meeting at the fifth International Breast Cancer Conference, held in Paris, France, on 29 January 2011. The purpose of the meeting was to examine several questions relating to triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC):
• How should TNBC be defined?
• Are there clinically important TNBC subtypes?
• Should patients be given adjuvant or neoadjuvant treatment for TNBC?
• Should patients with TNBC and their families have genetic tests?
• How should relapsing or metastatic TNBC be treated?
Using a real-life case study, at each stage of the patient care pathway from diagnosis through assessment to treatment, the audience was encouraged to vote on potential decisions, before an expert panel on which we all sat discussed the evidence and presented what we consider constitutes best clinical practice.

In this article we share the proceedings of the meeting, which we believe contained valuable educational content of potential interest to the wider healthcare community.