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Program notes — ACMG 2026

Post-meeting prep notes. Verified facts pulled from the ACMG meeting site, the ACMG Foundation award announcements, and the pre-meeting press registration release. Items tagged *per pre-meeting press, GIM abstract supplement pending* will be reconciled when the abstract supplement publishes (~April–May post-meeting) and the on-demand Digital Edition is fully accessible.

Status: Scaffold (post-meeting) — ready for retrospective bulk extraction. The meeting concluded March 14, 2026; today is May 11, 2026 (~8 weeks post-meeting). On-demand recordings becoming available rolling through April–May; GIM abstract supplement typically lands within ~4–8 weeks of meeting close.

Meeting metadata (verified)

Field Value
Name 2026 ACMG Annual Clinical Genetics Meeting
Society American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG)
Foundation arm ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine
Dates March 10 – 14, 2026 (Tuesday – Saturday)
Venue Baltimore Convention Center, One West Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
Theme Where Genetics Meets Innovation
Presidential Plenary theme The Future of Expanded Newborn Genomic Screening
Attendance (approx.) ~3,500 (clinical geneticists, lab directors, genetic counselors, trainees, industry)
Abstract scale (approx.) ~1,500+ accepted (platform + poster) — exact 2026 count to be confirmed from GIM supplement
CME / credit CME, P.A.C.E.®, NSGC credit-eligible
Digital Edition On-demand recordings available post-meeting via acmgeducation.net

Named awards (verified where announced)

Award 2026 Recipient Affiliation Notes
David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award (Foundation's highest honor) John C. Carey, MD, MPH, FACMG, FAAP Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, University of Utah School of Medicine >40-year career; former Division Chief of Medical Genetics; creator/Program Director of the Medical Genetics Training Program; 400+ peer-reviewed articles; co-author Medical Genetics and Genomics (6th ed.); Editor-in-Chief American Journal of Medical Genetics (2001–2016); founding professional/medical advisor to SOFT (Trisomy 13/18 support). Announced via PRNewswire pre-meeting.
Dr. Michael S. Watson Genomic Medicine Award TBC from on-demand program TBD Annual award; recognizes leadership in genomic-medicine implementation.
Richard King Trainee Awards TBC from on-demand program Multiple Trainee research-excellence awards across categories (resident, fellow, student).
ACMG Foundation Day of Caring partnered with Kennedy Krieger Institute Baltimore Custom-bicycle presentations to local children with genetic conditions; recurring Foundation outreach event.

Other ACMG Foundation professional awards historically announced at the Annual Meeting (Dr. Michael S. Watson Genomic Medicine Award; Dr. Bronya J.B. Keats International Award; Excellence in Human Genetics Education Award; Founders Award; Stephens Family Endowed Award; etc.) — to be filled from the on-demand program / Foundation award-winners page.

Session-shape inventory (verified or expected)

Plenary slots

  • Presidential Plenary — The Future of Expanded Newborn Genomic Screening (Wed Mar 11). Combined with ACMG Foundation Awards ceremony and David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award Lecture (Carey).
  • Additional named-award lectures — distributed across plenary mornings (Watson, King, Foundation awards).
  1. Non-Invasive Fetal Sequencing (NIFS) Is Coming: Are You Ready? — prenatal screening expansion beyond NIPT to whole-fetal sequencing.
  2. Clonal Hematopoiesis, Somatic and Post-Zygotic Mosaicism in Multigene Cancer Testing for Geneticists — clinical-lab translation of CHIP / mosaicism findings.
  3. Beyond The List — Scope and Implementation of ACMG Secondary Findings — debate on SF list expansion (current v3.3) and pediatric reporting.
  4. Diagnostic challenges from the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) — rare-disease diagnostic odyssey case readouts.
  5. Washington policy session — FDA LDT final-rule implications, CMS coverage, payer dynamics.
  6. Genomic Oncology track — hereditary cancer, germline-somatic integration, pharmacogenomics in oncology.
  7. Gene Therapy implementation — clinical-lab perspective on AAV / CRISPR / antisense-oligonucleotide therapeutic deployment.

Platform-presentation tracks (verified format; track-1 confirmed)

  • Platform 1 — Hereditary Cancer and Adult Genetics (verified)
  • Additional platform sessions span: prenatal/perinatal, biochemical/metabolic, AI/informatics, clinical genetics / rare disease, ELSI / health services, therapeutics, education / training. Numbering and exact slate to be filled from GIM supplement.

TED-style talks

ACMG continues the TED-style perspective-slot format that became a signature of the program in recent years; specific 2026 titles to be reconciled from program.

Case-based sessions

Load-bearing pedagogical format for the practicing-clinician audience. Multiple parallel case-based sessions across the four meeting days; cases drawn from real clinical-genetics-clinic referrals across pediatric, adult, prenatal, and cancer-genetics tracks.

Short Courses (pre-meeting, Tuesday)

Pre-meeting Short Courses cover laboratory-genetics deep-dives, genetic-counseling primers, billing/coding, clinical pharmacogenomics, and trainee-targeted topics. Exact 2026 Short Course slate from program PDF.

Industry-supported satellite symposia (Tuesday + breakfast/lunch/evening slots)

Sponsors confirmed presenting or running symposia (per their own press): Illumina, Baylor Genetics, GeneDx (data + product updates), and others (Ambry, Natera, Myriad, Tempus, Caris, Variantyx, PreventionGenetics, etc. — to be confirmed from satellite-symposium grid).

Tracks and expected corpus weighting

Track Cancer-genomics relevance Notes
Cancer Genetics Core Hereditary cancer (HBOC, Lynch, FAP, Li-Fraumeni, PJS, Cowden, MEN, vHL, RB), germline-somatic integration, CHIP / mosaicism in cancer testing, ACMG SF cancer subset, universal-testing implementations.
ACMG/AMP Variant Classification Standards Core Underpins all clinical cancer-variant calling. SVI evidence-recalibration, ClinGen VCEP-specific specifications, AlphaMissense / LLM-as-PP3 controversies.
AI in Clinical Genomics Core LLM reproducibility benchmark (verified platform talk), AI-assisted genome interpretation pipelines, foundation-model variant-effect predictors in clinical workflows.
Prenatal / Perinatal / Reproductive Genetics Indirect NIFS, expanded NIPT, expanded carrier screening, fetal exome/genome. Pediatric-cancer-predisposition reporting from fetal/NBS sequencing is the cancer-relevant axis.
Newborn Screening (NBS) Indirect (Presidential Plenary core) Expansion-to-genomic-sequencing debate; BabySeq2, GUARDIAN, NBSeq, EarlyCheck. Pediatric cancer-predisposition reporting wedge.
Cardiovascular Genetics Adjacent HCM / DCM / LQTS panels — methods overlap with cancer panels, not biology.
Rare-Disease Diagnostics Adjacent UDN, GREGoR (presented at ASHG), WGS-first programs, long-read / RNA-seq for variant interpretation. Cancer-predisposition rare variants overlap.
Biochemical / Metabolic Genetics Indirect Inborn errors of metabolism — treatment focus.
Therapeutics / Gene Therapy Adjacent AAV / CRISPR / ASO therapy clinical-lab implementation. RB1 / TP53 gene-therapy intersections.
Health Services / Implementation / ELSI Indirect Payer / FDA / LDT framework — same framework gates cancer-LDT operations.
Education / Training / Workforce Indirect Genetic-counseling workforce, residency/fellowship curricula.

Key calendar markers (in-cycle)

  • March 10 (Tue): pre-meeting Short Courses + satellite symposia. Opening Reception evening.
  • March 11 (Wed): Presidential Plenary morning (NBS-expansion theme + Foundation Awards + Rimoin Award Lecture by Carey). Platform sessions begin afternoon.
  • March 12 (Thu) – March 14 (Sat): Full program — parallel platforms, symposia, case-based sessions, posters.
  • April–May 2026 (post-meeting): ACMG Digital Edition on-demand recordings roll out; GIM abstract supplement publishes.

Cross-meeting calendar (for downstream cross-linking)

Meeting Dates Relevance to ACMG 2026
JPM 2026 Jan 12–15, 2026 Clinical-lab vendor 2026 guidance pitched here; many show first peer-reviewed data at ACMG.
AGBT 2026 Feb 2026 Platform launches (PacBio Revio, ONT R10.4.1, Element Aviti, Singular) that ACMG talks then apply clinically.
AACR 2026 Apr 17–22, 2026 (Chicago) Hereditary-cancer / germline-somatic posters 4–6 weeks after ACMG; many overlap PIs.
ASCO 2026 May 29 – Jun 2, 2026 Cancer-predisposition trial-eligibility outcomes — methods that mature at ACMG arrive with patient outcomes.
ESHG 2026 Jun 2026 European clinical-genetics sibling; many overlapping speakers and topics.
ISMB 2026 Jul 12–16, 2026 Foundation-model variant-effect predictors that ACMG talks validate clinically.
ASHG 2026 Oct 20–24, 2026 (Montréal) Methods + cohort framing of much of the same clinical-lab work.
ASH 2026 Dec 12–15, 2026 Clonal hematopoiesis clinical sequelae (CHIP / MDS / AML) — ACMG runs the clinical-lab framing, ASH the clinical readouts.
SABCS 2026 Dec 8–11, 2026 Hereditary breast cancer panel discussions cross-pollinate.

To-do (retrospective bulk extraction)

  • [ ] Pull GIM abstract supplement when available; capture per-abstract DOIs in talks/ stubs.
  • [ ] Confirm Watson Genomic Medicine Award + Richard King Trainee Award + other Foundation award recipients from on-demand program.
  • [ ] Confirm Presidential Plenary speaker slate + Rimoin Lecture title.
  • [ ] Index all Hereditary Cancer and Adult Genetics (Platform 1) abstracts.
  • [ ] Index ACMG / ClinGen Standards updates announced at the meeting (variant-classification recalibrations, SF v3.4 if released, VCEP-specific specifications).
  • [ ] Identify ACMG 2026 hereditary-cancer presenters whose follow-up posters appear at AACR 2026 (Apr 17–22).
  • [ ] Cross-link AI/LLM-in-classification platform talks to ISMB 2026 / RECOMB 2026 methods papers and ASHG 2026 foundation-model talks.
  • [ ] Cross-link CHIP / mosaicism symposium to ASH 2026 MDS/AML talks and ASHG 2026 CHIP population-genetics talks.
  • [ ] Draft themes.md once talks/ reaches ~20–30 populated entries.

Sources