Highlights from the 38th SABCS annual meeting, 8th – 12th December 2015, San Antonio, USA

The 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) annual meeting highlighted the latest discoveries in breast cancer research and as ever provided a unique opportunity for investigators from all over the world to meet and network. With the rapidly increasing pace of discoveries in the basic, translational, and clinical sciences, mainly because of the advent of new technologies, cancer researchers are making rapid progress that is having significant patient benefit. This year’s meeting featured studies on targeted therapy plus endocrine therapy for metastatic disease with a mutation of PIK3CA, chemotherapy combinations for HER-2-positive disease, long-term outcomes of different surgeries for early-stage cancers, and the first-ever trial of a receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand (RANKL) inhibitor as an adjuvant treatment for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. In the educational session, there was significant emphasis on the role of metabolic syndrome and lifestyle on breast cancer outcome.