Adjuvant FEC Versus EP in Breast Cancer (MIG5)

At the time the Gruppo Oncologico Nord-Ovest- Mammella Intergruppo trial 5 (GONO-MIG5) was designed in 1996, paclitaxel was known to have efficacy in patients with advanced breast cancer, but its role was still to be established in the adjuvant setting. Therefore the GONO-MIG5 trial was designed to compare a standard anthracycline-containing chemotherapy regimen, i.e. 5fluorouracil, epirubicin, ciclophosphamide (FEC), given for 6 cycles to a new regimen containing both epirubicin and paclitaxel (EP), given concurrently, for 4 cycles. This latter regimen was chosen on the basis of the results obtained in metastatic breast cancer patients, where the combination of doxorubicin and paclitaxel was associated with more than 90% of objective response . Only four cycles of the new regimen were planned since the expected toxicity, particularly the cardiotoxicity, was high, and a short treatment duration was hoped to be the best strategy to obtain a favourable balance between the toxicity and the expected high efficacy.