OSUCCC – JAMES GRAND ROUNDS

The 2017-18 OSUCCC – James Grand Rounds series continues on selected Fridays throughout the academic year. All lectures take place from 8-9 a.m. in James L035 (Wasserstrom Family Conference Room on the Conference Level) unless otherwise noted, with breakfast available at 7:45 a.m. The next lecture will take place on Friday, March 2. Below is a biosketch for the next presenter.

MARCH 2 – Charles Perou, PhD, professor of genetics and of pathology & laboratory medicine at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina (UNC), will present Precision Medicine for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Patients Using a Systems Biology Approach” at 8 a.m. on March 2 in L035 James.

Dr. Perou, who also is The May Goldman Shaw Distinguished Professor of Molecular Oncology at UNC, is a renowned medical scientist whose laboratory team translates basic science discoveries into cancer therapies. His research interests span the disciplines of cancer biology, genomics, genetics, bioinformatics, statistics, systems biology and the treatment of patients in the clinic. His lab team’s primary experimental focus is on breast cancer.

In part through their work on The Cancer Genome Atlas Breast Cancer Project, Dr. Perou and colleagues have demonstrated that breast tumors can be classified into five molecular subtypes and are examining the genetic origins of each through such experimental approaches as RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq), single-cell RNA-seq, DNA exome sequencing, whole-genome sequencing, cell/tissue culturing and proteomics. His UNC website states that a major contribution of his to the field of precision medicine has been genomic characterization of human tumors, which led to the discovery of the Intrinsic Subtypes of Breast Cancer. This gene expression-based classification “was the first to identify the basal-like/triple-negative breast cancer subtype and has been translated into a test being used in breast cancer clinics worldwide.”

Dr. Perou earned his PhD in cellular and molecular biology in 1996 from the University of Utah and completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University before joining the faculty at UNC in 2000. He has authored or co-authored more than 330 articles in scientific journals and is an inventor on five U.S. patents.