The primary objective is time to disease progression. All patients must be treated with first line chemotherapy, consisting of one of the following regimens: a) ET (epirubicin 90 mg/sqm day 1 plus paclitaxel 200 mg/sqm (3 hour infusion) day 1, or b) AT (doxorubicin 50 mg/sqm day 1 plus paclitaxel 200 mg/sqm (3 hour infusion) day 2, administered on a 3 weekly schedule.
Patients with complete response, partial response or stable disease are eligible for MANTA1 study.
The expected median progression free survival of metastatic breast cancer patients who achieve a disease control after first line chemotherapy was estimated to be 10 months. The minimal improvement, justifying the adoption of maintenance paclitaxel, was estimated to be at least 3 months. With 262 eligible patients on each arm, the trial will have a power of 80% to detect a 30% improvement in median progression free survival, testing at the two-sided .05 significance level.
