American Society of Clinical Oncology--35th annual meeting. 15-18 May 1999, Atlanta, GA, USA

A major focus of this year's meeting was the plenary session on the use of high-dose chemotherapy for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer and the incorporation of adjuvant treatment for poor prognosis primary breast cancer. Four abstracts on large randomized collaborative trials in the US, Scandinavian countries and South Africa were presented in this plenary session and discussed by Dr R Livingston (University of Washington, USA), Dr G Hortobagyi (University of Texas/MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA) and Dr K Antman (Columbia University, USA). In general, high-dose chemotherapy followed by (autologous bone marrow) stem cell support has not yet shown improvement in overall survival and has contributed to substantial side-effects when compared to standard chemotherapy in breast cancer. In most trials, however, follow-up was short and long-term analysis may change the current conclusions. Other issues of interest included early clinical trials on agents affecting angiogenesis, signal transduction inhibitors, gene therapy and cancer vaccines.