Overview of the MINDACT trial results presented at EBCC-12

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Published: 16 Oct 2020
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Prof Etienne Brain - EORTC Breast cancer group chair

Prof Etienne Brain discusses with ecancer the results of the MINDACT trial presented at EBCC-12.

He talks about the importance of this trial and why it was initiated in the first place and how the long term follow-up has proved successful in using certain drug combinations for chemotherapy against breast cancer.

He says age is also a factor that impacts the type and prognosis of chemotherapy used.

Regarding MINDACT, which has been one of the largest trials ever led with a genomic tool to assess a prognosis, the true prognosis, of a tumour in the patient, we have now long-term follow-up results which are very consistently reassuring in the way that it shows that trying to capture a bit better the biology of cancer helped deciphering or selecting those who are really good candidates for chemotherapy or not. These long-term results after 7-8 years of follow-up show that what we have demonstrated in the seminal publication in The New England Journal of Medicine is confirmed with a longer follow-up. That’s very, very important because it gives a lot of credit to the work in research that we are doing. It is something which is rewarding for the teams but for the patients it creates a good match between what we pushed forward for a long time and what has been obtained.

It is critical to realise that after almost three or four decades of escalation in the indication of chemotherapy we reach a way, a situation, where we can absolutely with confidence forego or decrease this indication for an aggressive therapy that we use in adjuvant therapy. On the other side, it also stresses the need to refine and to fine tune these indications because probably age still counts a lot in the way we decide to go or not to go for chemotherapy, meaning that younger age is something which is not completely forgotten in terms of prognosis, poorer prognosis, more aggressive profile compared with older women.