Breast International Group (BIG)

The Breast International Group, based in Brussels, is the umbrella for more than fifty academic breast cancer groups worldwide, founded in 1999 by Martine Piccart, and the co-sponsor of some of the largest academic breast trials ever run. Coordinating more than sixty groups and ten thousand hospitals, it ran HERA on adjuvant trastuzumab, APHINITY on pertuzumab, MINDACT on the MammaPrint signature, and OlympiA on adjuvant olaparib with NRG Oncology, with David Cameron and Evandro de Azambuja also linked. OnCo connects it to HER2-positive, HR-positive and triple-negative breast cancer, to trastuzumab and olaparib, and to member groups including Breast Cancer Trials and the ETOP IBCSG Partners Foundation. Secrecy and intellectual property blocking collaboration is the bottleneck its model is meant to overcome. Its OlympiA, HERA and MINDACT programmes are listed in the notes.