International Web-based consultation on priorities for translational breast cancer research

Large numbers of translational breast cancer research topics have been completed or are underway, but they differ widely in their immediate and/or future importance to clinical management. We therefore conducted an international Web-based consultation of breast cancer professionals to identify the topics most widely considered to be of highest priority.

Potential participants were contacted via two large e-mail databases and asked to register, at a Web site, the issues that they felt to be of highest priority. Four hundred nine questions were reduced by a steering committee to 70 unique issues, and registrants were asked to select the 6 questions they considered to be the most important.

Votes were recorded from 420 voters (2,520 votes) from 48 countries, with 48% of voters coming from North America. Half of the voters identified themselves as clinicians, with the remainder being academics, research scientists, or pathologists. The highest priority was to identify molecular signatures to select patients who could be spared chemotherapy, which gained about 50% more votes than the second topic and was consistently voted top by voters in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world. Research scientists voted the determination of the role of stem cells in breast cancer development, progression, and treatment sensitivity as the most important issue, but this was considered the sixth priority for clinicians and fourth overall.

This exercise may bring a greater focus of research resources onto issues voted as top priorities.