We reported the results of the clinical trial named CREATE-X where we compared the standard treatment and the capecitabine treatment plus standard for the patients who have residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. These patients are basically poor prognostic, have a higher discovery recurrence, that we just wanted to see how the capecitabine treatment is effective to improve survival outcomes.

Were these triple negative patients?

Actually we had some negative patients: the luminal disease, the hormone receptor positive and the triple negative patients were included.

Why did you choose capecitabine?

That’s the big question. After neoadjuvant chemotherapy with anthracycline and a taxane still we have not so many, but not so small, we have some patients who don’t have the pCR. So potentially they are resistant to anthracycline and taxane. The capecitabine is a agent so we chose the capecitabine in this particular trial.

What was the outcome?

The outcome and the disease free survival was the endpoint. It was the big different in terms of the disease free survival in favour of the capecitabine arm.

What are the implications?

Presumably it’s possible to think about other therapeutic options for such patients having the high risk for recurrence after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

What will be the options?

We have some limitations about the reimbursement in each country. So I cannot say it is quite possible but it can be a possible option for such patients. In terms of the overall survival outcome it was also significantly different. So the capecitabine treatment is able to prolong the disease free survival but also overall survival. That is the big outcome of this trial and almost in all subgroups we could see the benefit of capecitabine. That’s another important aspect of the capecitabine treatment.