The 31st Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is in full swing, and great reports are coming in from the front lines by way of blogs and podcasts. We'll link to some of those highlights later in this article, but first – a brief overview of the Symposium's history and mission:

Originally a one-day regional program with less than 500 participants, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium now spans four days, during which over 8,000 scientists, researchers, physicians, and patient advocates from over 80 countries gather to share cutting-edge information on breast cancer-related research.

The first annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was held in November, 1978, during what was then Breast Cancer Awareness Week (not month, as we have now). It was designed to be part of an outreach program for public and professional education in an effort to bring about a "significant" decrease in the death rate from breast cancer in the San Antonio area. From this humble beginning, the SABCS has grown to the size of a small city.

As stated on their website, the objective of the SABCS is to "provide state-of-the-art information on the experimental biology, etiology, diagnosis and therapy of breast cancer and premalignant disease, to an international audience of academic and private physicians and researchers." That's quite an undertaking, to say the least, and if you go to their website, you will most likely be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available.

With that said, the SABCS website is quite user-friendly, and each day's agenda (called a "Session Index") is broken down into clearly divided subjects. Then, within each subject, abstracts of the research papers being presented are given. Literally hundreds of papers are accepted each year (800+ in 2007), and these abstracts are an excellent way to get a handle on the topics being presented. A complimentary CD-ROM of all the Symposium presentations can be ordered online, and the SABCS website offers many other interactive features such as a streaming webcast, podcasts, downloadable mp3 files and the like. Definitely the next best thing to being there!

The Symposium's goal is to offer a balanced representation of basic (laboratory), clinical and translational (knowledge acquired in the lab applied to human subjects) research. In addition to the actual presentations regarding current research being done, there are also group discussions and breakout sessions in which the topics can be discussed at some length.

As to actual highlights, with subjects ranging from Tumor Progression, Invasion and Metastasis to Biopsy Techniques, to Social and Behavioral Outreach Studies, to Diagnostic Pathology (just to name a few), it's hard to know where to start. The links below will help guide you to some excellent real-time coverage of this exciting event.

One thing that is important, however, especially as we read the abstracts, is to remember that they can be misleading. Sometimes, abstracts can present findings in such a light that a particular therapy sounds more promising than it really is. It may be that a drug is still in the early stages of clinical testing and might never be approved for market. Or, research findings may show the results of a particular therapy to be "statistically significant" in improving chances of survival. This sounds wonderful on the surface, but there are many other factors that go into the equation. Unless we understand the complete analysis, we won't know if "statistically significant" translates to a real improvement in survival rates. As always, check with your health care provider for clarification.