This symposium is the third of an annual series of CME symposia designed to provide physicians involved with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer with the knowledge and competence to personalize their therapies and to improve the outcomes of their patients with this malignancy.

Unlike the other annual breast cancer symposia, meetings and congresses that are much larger and, which often present too much information on too many topics, this one-day symposium provides physicians with a comprehensive but concise update on how to apply the most up-to-date therapies for breast cancer patients using what is becoming the state-of-the-art approach to treating breast cancer today: personalized therapies. Moreover, following the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by two months, it enables physicians who cannot or do not want to attend San Antonio to benefit from the highlights from San Antonio that will be included in this symposium on February 6, 2010.

We expect the Third Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies for Breast Cancer will be even more successful than last year’s program. This is based upon the following: continued advances during this past year involving the science of predictive and prognostic biomarkers, and also validations and improved outcomes in the clinic, regarding the personalizing of therapies for breast cancer patients, and, because of the many agenda and format improvements we have made to an already very well attended and highly rated symposium as a result of the following important sources of information: detailed feedback contained in the 200-plus participants' evaluations from the Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies of Lung Cancer and Head and Neck Cancer which was held in Philadelphia in September 2009; many in-depth telephone and personal interviews with attendees and faculty of that symposium, and, also feedback from attendees and faculty of the Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies of Breast Cancer, which was held in Miami in January 2009.

Some content was eliminated from last year’s symposium. This was also at the request of the learners and included data regarding excessive scientific data about gene arrays, specific surgical techniques, and data regarding the use of anti-emetic agents. Otherwise, the primary content of the February 6, 2010 symposium has actually been expanded to include more data on the use of systemic drug therapy, again, this was a request from the learners. This change of additional content devoted to systemic therapy will help oncologists and hematologist/oncologists treating breast cancer to close their practice gaps, considering the volume of new clinical data on breast cancer. The detailed agenda is found in another section of this Web site.

The format of the symposium extensively utilizes adult learning principles. The learning design is one that is very highly interactive between the learners and the faculty throughout the symposium. The faculty has been instructed to begin each didactic presentation with either a brief patient case study and/or a few clinical questions, and to use ARS for engaging the learners at the beginning of each presentation. We used this approach at our Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies and Best Clinical Practices for Breast Cancer in January 2009 and also in September 2009 in Philadelphia for the Second Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies and Best Clinical Practices for Lung Cancer and Head and Neck Cancer. This approach was so successful that it will be used again for this breast cancer symposium to further facilitate adult learning.

There will be four interactive Point-CounterPoint debates for further audience faculty involvement. The learners will vote on the Point-CounterPoint debates via ARS. Each session of the symposium will conclude with a 15-minute Panel Discussion and Consensus Period during which the following three questions will be asked of the session’s faculty regarding the particular session’s content to help ensure that the content can be applied to clinical practice today: 1) Is this a new standard of care? 2) Should it be discussed with your patients? 3) How can you use it today in your practice?

And one new methodology we will be beta testing at the live symposium to further engage the learner is the use of Twitter™. The audience will be able to “tweet” via Twitter™ to ask questions or make comments that will be given to the symposium Co-Chairs. This will require the use of the learners’ own computers with a wireless internet connection or the use of the learners’ “smart cell phones” with Twitter™ already installed....most Blackberries, iPhones, and most other newer cell phones can be easily Twitter™ enabled.

Much of the important new scientific and clinical data with breast cancer includes clinical trials’ results regarding newer molecular biomarkers and tests that are helping make easier the identification of and the improved treatment of breast cancer patient sub groups and personalized therapies to treat them. At the 2009 ASCO meeting there were several abstracts and sessions including new data on existing and newer biomarker tests that can further help identify HER2-positive breast cancer patient sub populations. This information is critical for managing breast cancer patients who either failed to respond or who have relapsed on current anti-HER2 therapies, especially with the emergence of new anti-HER2 therapies for treating relapsed patients or patients who failed to respond to initial anti-HER2 therapy.

ASCO 2009 also revealed data on the subjects of the existing and also new gene-based assays that help with the identification of hormone-receptor positive patients who might better respond to endocrine therapy and to chemotherapy. One abstract was actually designed to show correlation of test results with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) treatment guidelines. New data regarding BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing was also revealed at the 2009 ASCO meeting. The faculty indicated that this is important for developing systemic regimens using PARP inhibitors and also for identifying patient sub groups who may better benefit from platinum-based therapies. And there were several abstracts and posters on the biomarker, SPARC (Secreted Protein acidic Rich in Cysteine) that were presented along with several clinical studies using nab-paclitaxel for breast cancer therapy in various treatment settings. Subsequently, there have been data regarding the clinical validation of a test that is a semi-automated assay that enables the capture, identification, and classification of circulating tumor cells, and the availability of a Breast Lymph Node (BLN) molecular diagnostic assay for breast lymph node testing, and further usage of both the commercially available 70-gene DNA micro array-based in vitro test, and the 21-gene assay which help determine therapy selection and disease recurrence in some patients.

And with this increasing number of diagnostic tests and molecular classification data and biomarkers, the following questions in practice have been addressed. “For which patients with breast cancer are these various tests including tests for HER2 status, most appropriate and useful?” “What are the appropriate clinical applications of gene-based testing?” What are the molecular predictors of response to adjuvant endocrine therapy?” And most importantly, “How does each of these tests help oncologists with improved decision making as they decide how to treat their patients with breast cancer? Thus, this entire area of using molecular biomarkers and testing is a major practice gap.

There still exists a practice gap between the IDEAL and BASELINE practices for personalizing radiation and surgical therapies for local-regional control of breast cancer. The primary goal of neoadjuvant therapy is the conversion of inoperable disease to operable disease. There is also potential to downstage involved axillary nodes and reduce axillary surgery. Reducing the need for radiation therapy is another potential outcome of effective neoadjuvant therapy. Long-term benefits with increase local-regional control of the disease through neo-adjuvant therapy and radiation may result in better long-term outcome. The personalized use of neo-adjuvant therapy is evolving and therefore there is a need to educate physicians on this topic to improve their practices.

And because of the new clinical data presented at the 2009 ASCO meeting on the three major sub types of breast cancer, HER2-positive, ER/PR-positive, and Triple Negative Disease (TND), both therapy for the first-line and for refractory patients wil be addressed, as well as therapy in the adjuvant setting.

This symposium will address a large amount of data on existing as well as investigational new drugs such as the increasing number of anti-HER2 therapies, dual anti-HER2 and anti-angiogenic inhibition, new targets such as PARP inhibition, newer monoclonal antibodies and other intracellular pathways and targets for breast cancer. And as previously mentioned, highlights from the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December 2009 which are important to clinicians will be included on February 6, 2010 in this Third Annual Symposium on Personalized Therapies and Best Clinical Practices for Breast Cancer.