Breast cancer was the focus of several presentations during the 27th European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress held in Nice. Fulvestrant seems to be equally effective to tamoxifen as a first-line therapy in hormone-sensitive advanced breast cancer in postmenopausal women. However, it may be more effective than tamoxifen in ER- and PgR-positive disease. The addition of tamoxifen to epirubicin containing regimens was found to significantly increase PFS and OS in patients with MBC according to a multivariate analysis of 640 patients. BRCA-1 linked breast cancer was reported to be more sensitive to anthracycline-based CT than sporadic and BRCA-2 linked disease. VEGF was found to be an independent prognostic factor in patients with node-negative breast cancer. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.