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Introduction

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will sponsor a Consensus Development Conference on Adjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer on November 1–3, 2000. Each year, more than 180,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer, the most common type of cancer among women in this country. If current breast cancer rates stay constant, a female born today has a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer sometime during her life.

Through continuing research into new treatment methods, women with breast cancer now have more treatment options and hope for survival than ever before. Studies have shown that adjuvant therapy—treatment to kill cancer cells that may have begun to spread, or metasta-size, from the breast tumor—given in addition to surgery or other primary therapies increases a woman’s chance of long-term survival.

Two types of systemic adjuvant therapy are used for breast cancer, either alone or in combination: adjuvant chemotherapy involves a combination of anticancer drugs; adjuvant hormone therapy deprives cancer cells of the female hormone estrogen, which some breast cancer cells need to grow. In addition to these systemic therapies, radiation therapy is sometimes used as a local adjuvant treatment to help destroy breast cancer cells that have spread to nearby parts of the body.

The rapid pace of discovery in this area continues to broaden the knowledge base from which informed treatment decisions can be made. The purpose of this conference is to clarify, for clinicians, patients, and the general public, various issues regarding the use of adjuvant therapy for breast cancer. After 1• days of presentations and audience discussion of the latest adjuvant therapy research, an independent, non-Federal consensus development panel will weigh the scientific evidence and draft a statement that will be presented to the conference audience on the third day. The consensus development panel’s statement will address the following key questions:

• Which factors should be used to select systemic adjuvant therapy?
• For which patients should adjuvant hormonal therapy be recommended?
• For which patients should adjuvant chemotherapy be recommended? Which should be used, and at what dose or schedule?
• For which patients should postmastectomy radiotherapy be recommended?
• How do side effects and quality-of-life issues factor into individual decision-making about adjuvant therapy?
• What are promising new research directions for adjuvant therapy?

On the final day of the meeting, the panel chairperson, Dr. Patricia Eifel, will read the draft statement to the conference audience and invite comments and questions. A press conference will follow to allow the panel and chairperson to respond to questions from media representatives.

General Information

Conference sessions will be held in the Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. Sessions will run from 8 a.m. to 5:35 p.m. on Wednesday, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Thursday, and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Friday. The telephone number for the message center is (301) 496-9966; the fax number is (301) 480-5982.

Cafeteria

The cafeteria in the Natcher Conference Center is located one floor above the auditorium on the main floor of the building. It is open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., serving breakfast and lunch.

Sponsors

The primary sponsors of this meeting are the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research (OMAR). Cosponsors include the National Institute of Nursing Research and the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health.

Statement of Interest

In accordance with ACCME requirements, each speaker presenting at this conference has been asked to submit documentation outlining all outside involvement pertaining to the subject area. Please refer to the chart in your participant packet for details.