Etienne Brain, MD, is board certificated in medical oncology, and has worked at Institut Curie in Saint-Cloud, France since 1998. Following a fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston University, both in Boston, MA, USA in 1996, he obtained a PhD in 2005. He supervised research at Versailles/Saint-Quentin University in Versailles, France in 2010. He received a diploma in Management and Health Economics from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy in 2015.
For more than 20 years, Dr Brain has been very involved in clinical research for breast cancer and cancer in older patients. He has chaired the group GERICO (Unicancer) and the DIALOG intergroup (labelled by the INCa), both of which are dedicated to clinical research on cancer in older persons. Dr Brain has chaired the breast cancer group of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), and he has been the EORTC Secretary General since 2021. He is an executive board member of the Breast International Group.
The management of breast cancer in older patients is the key issue addressed by Dr Brain’s work, considering both competitive risks for mortality and frailty in the treatment decision-making process. This is best epitomised by the ASTER 70s study; the largest clinical trial (2000 women aged 70 and older) ever conducted, of which he presented the results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago in June 2022, after receiving the B.J. Kennedy Geriatric Oncology Award at the same meeting. He also received the Michel Hery Award in geriatric oncology at the Monaco Age Oncology conference 2023.
