Obstacles, Opportunities and Priorities for Advancing Metastatic Breast Cancer Research.

In January 2016, the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance (the Alliance) convened a think tank of stakeholders from academia, government, industry, and patient advocacy to discuss gaps and opportunities in clinical and translational research in metastatic breast cancer. Priorities that emerged from the meeting included the following: the need for innovative preclinical model systems to study metastatic disease; increased sharing of resources and data; collaboration across cancer care teams and scientists; biorepositories for studies to identify biomarkers for treatment response; creation of patient registries to increase access to clinical trials and tissue procurement; and redesign of clinical trials in metastatic breast cancer. .