Event Resources

Attending SABCS 2024? Presenting?
Here are some resources to help you have a successful symposium:

Presenter Information: If you are a presenter, you need to visit the Presenter Information page to get access to presenter Guidelines and information about support such as thet Speaker Ready Room.

Patient Advocates: SABCS has a long history of welcoming Patient Advocates to the Symposium and offering educational programming hosted by the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation. We also have a special lounge just for Patient Advocates in Room 220, the Cantilever Room. Learn more.

Onsite Services: Learn about services available at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center during the symposium, including Child Care, a shuttle to nearby hotels, the SABCS Store, and much more.

Travel: Coming Soon

Media: If you are a media member, check this page to apply for press registration, and rules around how filming, recording, photography and more.


SABCS Meeting News

Read in-depth coverage of the 2024 Symposium, including the biggest sessions, research presentations, discussion topics, and more.


History

2024 marks the 47th year of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, now the largest breast cancer research gathering in the world, with more than 10,000 registered attendees from 102 countries presenting 1,886 accepted abstracts in sessions over four days in December.

The symposium comes from humble beginnings though. In 1978, Bill McGuire, MD, and Chuck Coltman, MD, worked together at the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Texas Health Science Center. The pair decided to establish a local breast cancer symposium designed to provide a venue for the education of oncologists working in the city. The first symposium, held in a small motel near the airport, had no more than 50 attendees. 

The meeting grew slowly until McGuire and Coltman decided to change the scope of the meeting to encompass more research by inviting abstracts for oral or poster presentation. McGuire thought that it would be best for clinicians to hear about basic research and for the lab researchers to hear about clinical research and issues affecting patients. Retrospectively, what McGuire was really thinking about at this time was “translational research,” a term that was only coined years later (1991) to describe a “new type of research” during the development of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Specialized Program of Research Excellence grant program. With this new format, the meeting grew rapidly and was moved to the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the river in downtown San Antonio, and eventually to the Marriott Rivercenter, where it stayed for many years.

McGuire and Coltman experimented a few times with simultaneous sessions, clinical research presentations in one hall and laboratory research in another, but that approach was rapidly abandoned when it became clear that this violated McGuire’s premise that clinicians needed to hear and understand basic research and basic researchers needed exposure to clinical research if we were going to make progress in curing breast cancer.

Although a few attendees complained about the joint sessions, most embraced the idea, which continues to this day. McGuire and Coltman were ahead of their time in fostering the idea of enhancing translation of basic discoveries to the clinic. The symposium was also among the first to include patient advocates in meeting planning and participation in educational and case discussion sessions. Later, Amy Langer, a pioneer in the advocacy movement, would deliver one of the W. L. McGuire Memorial Lectures.

Every year the meeting grew in attendance and soon it was moved to the San Antonio Convention Center, where it remains. A key change was a partnership created with the American Association for Cancer Research, which helped the symposium evolve into a global meeting that unites basic, translational, and clinical research with education on breast cancer.

(Note: Much of this history was written by Kent Osborne, MD, for the American Assocation for Cancer Research. Read his full first-person account.)


Access information from previous symposiums

46th Annual SABCS® (December 5-9, 2023)

SABCS Meeting News from 2023 

2023 Highlight Videos from Best of SABCS -  View original presentation slides and listen to commentary from world renowned experts on the significant science presented at SABCS®.

SABCS Snippets 2023 - Short videos highlighting major presentations and analysis filmed during the event.

Photo gallery - see pictures from SABCS 2023, with links to photos from previous symposia.

Visit the SABCS YouTube page to see videos from previous years, along with the latest information on the latest breast cancer research