The importance of dose and schedule in cancer chemotherapy: breast cancer

For a variety of reasons, sociopolitical as well as biological, breast cancer therapy has become an area of great public and professional interest over the last decade. Studies in the US have focused on intensive and high-dose chemotherapy, both in advanced and in high-risk adjuvant settings. In the UK more attention has been paid to primary medical therapy and lessons have been learned on the value of scheduling as well as dose. With peripheral blood stem cell transplantation technology established we are now in a position to examine intensive chemotherapy in high-risk and in advanced disease and must take the opportunity to establish its relative benefit in randomised clinical trials.