Charles M. Perou, PhD, will receive the William L. McGuire Memorial Lecture Award at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) 2026, according to The ASCO Post. The meeting runs December 8 to 11 at the Henry B. González Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, and Perou will give his award lecture on Thursday, December 10, at 9 AM CT.
His talk is titled "Quantitative Biomarkers and Disease Subtypes: The Building Blocks of Precision Medicine."
The honor recognizes Perou's work on breast cancer biology and treatment and his research in cancer genomics, The ASCO Post reports.
Why it matters
The McGuire award carries weight because of who it commemorates. The ASCO Post notes that the prize was created in 1992 to mark the contributions of William L. McGuire, MD, to breast oncology. McGuire was a Professor of Medicine and the first Chief of Oncology at UT Health San Antonio, and he helped establish estrogen receptor testing as a way to guide treatment for breast cancer patients — an early step in what is now called precision medicine. He and Charles A. Coltman, MD, founded SABCS in 1978.
Perou's selection also reflects how much the field's understanding of breast cancer has shifted over the past quarter century. Work he led turned the disease from a single diagnosis into a set of biologically distinct subtypes, a change that reshaped how researchers design studies and how clinicians think about prognosis.
From gene expression to PAM50
Perou holds several positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the May Goldman Shaw Distinguished Professor of Molecular Oncology and a professor in both the Department of Genetics and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He also serves as Co-Director of the Computational Medicine Program at the UNC School of Medicine, Faculty Director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Bioinformatics Group, and Co-Leader of the UNC Lineberger Breast Cancer Research Program.
According to The ASCO Post, his landmark 2000 study used gene expression profiling of breast tumors to identify distinct molecular subtypes that are now known to be tied to prognosis. To make it possible to sort breast cancers into those subtypes, he later developed the 50-gene Prediction Analysis of Microarray (PAM50) signature.
The ASCO Post reports that PAM50 has been important in letting researchers classify breast cancers and study how well treatments work in different subtypes. A PAM50-based assay weighs several factors, including a tumor's molecular subtype, and reports the likelihood that the disease will return. It is cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to predict recurrence risk in certain patients with breast cancer.
Basal-like tumors, triple-negative disease, and disparities
Perou also served as the breast cancer leader of The Cancer Genome Atlas Program. The ASCO Post reports that he used that database to show that basal-like breast cancers carry molecular features that set them apart genetically from other breast cancers while resembling high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
He further found that the basal-like subtype accounts for most cases of triple-negative breast cancer and appears at disproportionately high rates in Black women. According to The ASCO Post, that finding laid groundwork for understanding how differences in molecular subtype may contribute to racial disparities in breast cancer outcomes.
In a statement released with the announcement, Perou said he was deeply honored to receive the award from SABCS. He credited his students, colleagues, collaborators, and family, along with the patients and advocates who inspire the work, and said he remains committed to research that improves the lives of people affected by breast cancer.
Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, a SABCS Co-Director and Director of the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Dean of Oncology Programs at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said in the announcement that Perou has led and contributed to scientific advances since the initial subtype discovery. Arteaga said that work has both clarified breast cancer biology and informed patient prognosis and care, calling Perou an inspirational and highly impactful scientist and translational investigator who is most deserving of the award.
Perou's other recognitions include the UNC Award for Excellence in Basic Science Mentoring in 2023, the Bates College Sesquicentennial Prize in 2022, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research in 2022, the AACR Team Science Award in 2020, the OncLive Giants of Cancer Care Award in 2019, the Association of American Cancer Institutes Distinguished Scientist Award in 2018, the Susan G. Komen Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in 2016, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation Jill Rose Award for Distinguished Biomedical Research, also in 2016.
He was elected a Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2023 and received an honorary doctorate in medicine from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2026.
Perou completed his undergraduate studies at Bates College and earned a doctoral degree in experimental pathology from the University of Utah. He did postdoctoral training at Stanford University in the lab of David Botstein, PhD.
The lecture itself is scheduled for the morning of December 10, placing it near the middle of the four-day symposium. SABCS draws breast cancer researchers and clinicians from around the world each December, and the McGuire lecture is one of its marquee sessions.
Watch for the December 10 lecture, where Perou is expected to connect quantitative biomarkers and disease subtypes to the broader push toward precision medicine in breast cancer care.
