We appreciate the interest expressed by Shimoi et al 1 and Shimanuki et al 2 in our recent manuscript. 3 They raise thoughtful issues around two main questions. First, might there be a subset of patients who benefit from platinum therapy? Second, why was disease-free survival in capecitabine-treated patients in EA1131 so much worse than in capecitabine-treated patients in the CREATE-X 4 trial? In both cases, we stand by our reported conclusions.Negative clinical trial results often spawn the search for subsets of patients who might benefit from the therapies in question. Shimoi et al 1 wonder specifically about the accuracy of subtyping used in EA1131, and whether we may not have focused on the optimal subtype. In addition, they correctly point out that patients who harbor deleterious BRCA mutations may be uniquely sensitive to DNA-damaging agents such as the platinums. 5 Molecular classification schemes have differed in how they define basal subtype. However, there is substantial overlap, and nearly 40% of basal-like breast cancers as determined by the PAM50 classification used in EA1131 would be classified as either basal-like 1 or 2 in the Lehmann classification. 6 At the time of protocol development in 2013, germline BRCA mutation testing was not yet recommended for all patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). However, we suspect that patients with BRCA-mutated cancers are under-represented in EA1131, as they (1) are more likely to achieve a pathologic complete response to anthracycline-or alkylating-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy, (2) are more likely to have been treated with a platinum agent in the neoadjuvant setting, and (3) are likely to have preferentially participated in the OlympiA trial 7 of adjuvant olaparib versus observation. All these factors (alone or in combination) would have made them ineligible for EA1131. Regardless, analyses of tumor specimens banked as part of EA1131 are underway and will explore the Lehmann classification, BRCA mutation status, and other potential markers of platinum sensitivity.