NEW CLINICAL TRIAL – EXPERT

New Clinical Trial – EXPERT Aims to Identify Women Who Can Safely Avoid Radiation Therapy

The EXPERT clinical trial is an exciting new study which aims to see whether a genomic test of breast cancer tissue can be used to identify women who can safely avoid radiation therapy after breast cancer surgery.

In a first for Breast Cancer Trials (BCT), BCT are the international co-lead group in collaboration with BIG to recruit 1,170 participants globally.

Radiation therapy after breast conserving surgery is the current standard of care for the majority of patients with early breast cancer. However, breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, and the absolute benefit of radiation in individual patients varies substantially. Thus, a pressing priority in contemporary breast cancer management is to tailor utilisation of radiation therapy to the individual recurrence risks by identifying patients who are unlikely to benefit from radiation, thereby avoiding the morbidity and costs of over-treatment.

The primary objective of EXPERT is to determine if omission of radiation therapy is not inferior to radiation therapy in terms of local recurrence free interval after breast conserving surgery in patients with stage I, luminal A early breast cancer who are planned to receive adjuvant endocrine therapy.

EXPERT is the first large-scale randomised trial that investigates the use of a multigene expression panel (PAM 50-based Prosigna Assay) to enable safe and individualised de-escalation of adjuvant breast radiation in early breast cancer.

This international collaborative study lends itself to answering additional questions of clinical, research and public health importance. EXPERT will examine patient reported outcomes and health economic impact. Importantly, a biological resource bank will be curated to enable translational research that focuses on enhancing prognostic precision for individual local recurrence risk.

Breast Cancer Trials is the largest, independent, oncology clinical trials research group in Australia and New Zealand. For almost 40 years, Breast Cancer Trials has conducted a national clinical trials research program for the treatment, prevention and cure of breast cancer. For more information about Breast Cancer Trials, visit www.breastcancertrials.org.au

Scientific Title EXPERT (EXamining PErsonalised Radiation Therapy for low-risk early breast cancer) is a randomised phase III trial of adjuvant radiation therapy versus observation following breast conserving surgery and endocrine therapy in patients with molecularly characterised low-risk luminal A early breast cancer.

For more information, please contact: Anna Fitzgerald, Breast Cancer Trials Communications Manager Phone: 02 4925 5255 or 0400 304 224 Email: anna.fitzgerald@bctrials.org.au