The BBCRC is replacing the Nottingham International Breast Cancer Conference (NIBCC) and the intention is that it will be held biennially as was the NIBCC. The BBCRC is a true multidisciplinary conference for all those specialising in breast cancer from all disciplines.
Like was the NIBCC it will be a research meeting and is not intended to be an educational meeting. Research is defined quite widely to include outcomes (survival, recurrences, QoL, cosmetic result, etc); relation to tumor variables (eg grade; results of clinical trials or of follow-up of large series; results of diagnostic procedures; laboratory-based topics (eg gene probing, growth factors, hormone receptors), translational aspects are preferred for most of these.
It is intended that the ethos and general format of the first meeting will follow that of the NIBCC’s. The NIBCC’s were largely composed of short presentations of accepted abstracts each followed by 5 minutes discussion, usually given by the laboratory scientists, clinical research fellows or trainees actually doing the work rather than by senior staff. This has led to a very active debate with a great deal of audience interaction and was the key to the popularity of the TIBCO.