Talks — ASHG 2026¶
The primary artifact of this vault: one Markdown file per talk. ASHG 2026 is a hybrid meeting — some talks are tool / pipeline / package debuts, others are clinical-genetics / cohort readouts, others are pure-methods papers. The per-talk schema accommodates all three with one Anchor field.
Status: Template + master index. Per-talk pages will be populated once the program-at-a-glance is public (typically early-September 2026) and the AJHG abstract supplement lands (~September 2026). Pre-meeting stubs flagged
*expected, program not yet public*are sourced from ASHG 2025 program shape, lab websites, and cohort-consortium dashboards (All of Us, UK Biobank, gnomAD); titles and assignments will be reconciled with the official program.
Per-talk template¶
Each talk file (e.g., allan-award-2026.md, aou-cancer-prs.md, gnomad-v5.md) follows this schema. Copy and fill:
# <Talk title — short>
> **Session:** <session name, date, time ET, room> · **Track:** <track / theme> · **Abstract:** <AJHG / abstract #, if assigned>
## At a glance
- **Speaker:** <name, degrees>
- **Affiliation:** <institution, department, lab>
- **Day / session / track:** <Tue Oct 20 / Plenary 1 / Statistical Genetics>
- **Talk title:** <full title as in program>
- **Anchor type:** <tool / package / pipeline | study / cohort / readout | methods paper | award lecture>
- **Anchor:** <package name + Bioconductor/CRAN/PyPI link | study acronym + NCT or cohort | manuscript citation + DOI>
- **Co-authors / consortium:** <if applicable — e.g., All of Us, UK Biobank, GREGoR, gnomAD>
- **Preprint / paper:** <bioRxiv / medRxiv / Nature Genetics / AJHG / HGGA DOI, if accompanying>
## Key result
<One paragraph. Numbers + cohort size + effect size if known. If pre-program, mark
`*expected per <lab page / cohort dashboard / prior-year talk>*` or
`*pre-program speculation*`.>
## Methods / approach
<2–4 sentences. What cohort, what assay, what statistical / computational method,
what comparator. For tool talks: what it consumes / produces, key
methodological idea, language / framework.>
## Why it matters for the corpus
<1–2 sentences. The cancer-genomics relevance specifically — does it inform
hereditary-cancer panel design, cancer-PRS stratification, somatic-mosaicism
detection, or methods used in AACR / ASCO / ASH talks?>
## Cross-links to corpus
- **AACR 2026:** <related session / poster, if applicable>
- **ASCO 2026:** <trial that uses the method / cohort / panel>
- **ASH 2026:** <CHIP / MN-predisposition tie-in>
- **ISMB 2026 / RECOMB 2026:** <methods-paper sibling talk>
- **AGBT 2026:** <upstream platform if this talk applies a new sequencing modality>
- **EuroBioC 2025 tools:** <Bioconductor package used / extended>
- **Other ASHG 2026 talks:** <session-mates, same-cohort, same-method>
## Sources
- AJHG abstract: <DOI / URL or "pending program release">
- Preprint / paper: <bioRxiv / medRxiv / journal DOI>
- Lab page / cohort dashboard: <URL>
- Recording (post-meeting): <ASHG virtual link or YouTube>
- Trade-press recap: <GenomeWeb / Bio-IT URL>
Master talk index¶
The shortlist below is for stub creation only — all entries are *expected, program not yet public* and will be reconciled with the official ASHG 2026 program when released. Stubs prioritize the cancer-genomics-relevant subset of the program (hereditary cancer, cancer-PRS, somatic mosaicism, clonal hematopoiesis, large-cohort pan-cancer readouts) plus the load-bearing methods / platform talks that we'd want to cite from cancer-talks downstream.
| Talk | Speaker (expected) | Affiliation | Day | Track | Anchor type | Anchor (expected) | Cancer-genomics relevance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| William Allan Award Lecture | TBA | TBA | Plenary (Wed Oct 21) | Award | award lecture | career retrospective | Variable — depends on awardee field |
| Curt Stern Award Lecture | TBA | TBA | Plenary (Thu Oct 22) | Award | award lecture | landmark contribution | Variable — Stern often goes to methods or rare-disease investigators with cancer-overlay relevance |
| Mendel Lecture | TBA (international) | TBA | Plenary (Fri Oct 23) | Award | award lecture | international keynote | Variable |
| Presidential Address / Symposium | Susan A. Slaugenhaupt | MGH / Harvard | Plenary (Tue Oct 20 evening) | Society | award lecture | Communicating Science in an Uncertain World | Indirect — public-trust framing |
| All of Us Research Program update | AoU leadership / scientific team | NIH / AoU consortium | TBD | Cohort plenary | study / cohort / readout | AoU v8 release, expected cancer-cohort overlay | High — pan-cancer germline-somatic on >800k participants expected |
| UK Biobank WGS / proteomics update | UKB scientific team | UK Biobank | TBD | Cohort plenary | study / cohort / readout | 500k WGS, expected cancer-PRS update | High — cancer-PRS, hereditary-cancer prevalence |
| gnomAD v5 release | Konrad Karczewski or team | Broad Institute | TBD | Population genetics | tool / pipeline | gnomAD v5 dataset + browser | High — variant-classification backbone for hereditary cancer |
| GREGoR Consortium update | GREGoR PIs | NHGRI / GREGoR | TBD | Mendelian / rare | study / cohort / readout | unsolved-rare-disease cohort | Indirect — cancer-predisposition rare variants |
| Cancer Genetics platform session | multiple | Multiple | TBD | Cancer Genetics | mixed | hereditary cancer panel updates | Core track |
| Hereditary cancer panel-design / VUS-resolution talks | multiple | Multiple (incl. Color, Invitae successor labs, academic VUS programs) | TBD | Cancer Genetics | study / cohort | ClinVar / VUS reclassification cohorts | Core — panel-classification accuracy |
| Clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP) population-scale talks | multiple (Bick / Natarajan / Jaiswal-aligned labs) | Multiple | TBD | Cancer Genetics / Statistical Genetics | study / cohort | CHIP prevalence + cancer-MN risk in UKB/AoU | Core — bridge to ASH MDS/AML talks |
| Cancer polygenic risk score (PRS) sessions | multiple (Mavaddat / Pharoah / Khera-aligned labs) | Multiple | TBD | Statistical Genetics | methods paper | breast / prostate / colorectal PRS cross-ancestry transferability | Core — trial-stratification relevance |
| Somatic mosaicism in non-cancer phenotypes | multiple | Multiple | TBD | Mosaicism | methods paper | somatic mosaicism callers + cohort applications | Methods bleed into cancer ctDNA / clonal-evolution work |
| Foundation-model variant-effect predictors | multiple (DeepMind / EvolutionaryScale / Calico) | Multiple | TBD | Computational / ML | methods paper | AlphaMissense follow-ons, ESM / EVO genomic models | Methods used in AACR variant-classification talks |
| Long-read clinical sequencing readouts | multiple (PacBio / ONT clinical adopters) | Multiple | TBD | Clinical / Diagnostics | tool / pipeline | clinical WGS programs using HiFi / ONT | Methods bleed into AGBT 2026 platform talks |
| Pan-cancer germline analysis (large cohort) | multiple | Multiple | TBD | Cancer Genetics | study / cohort | germline-pathogenic-variant prevalence across cancers | Core — informs panel composition + universal-testing debates |
| ELSI: AI ethics in genomics | multiple | Multiple | TBD | ELSI | discussion | responsible use of foundation models in clinical genomics | Indirect — cancer-AI return-of-results overlap |
| Trainee Research Excellence Award winners | Trainee awardees (announced ~July) | Multiple | TBD | Trainee plenary | mixed | to be announced | Variable but often high-signal |
Additional shortlist candidates to stub post-program-release:
- Cohort updates: MVP (Million Veteran Program) cancer-genomics module; FinnGen R12/R13; GBMI cross-biobank meta-analyses; H3Africa cancer-genomics arm; GenomeAsia 100K cancer-PRS transferability.
- Methods / tools: DeepVariant / GLnexus updates; CADD v2; PRS-CSx / SBayesRC cross-ancestry methods; mosaic-variant callers (MosaicHunter, deepMosaic); pangenome / HPRC clinical applications.
- Pre-meeting workshops to flag: statistical-genetics primers; clinical-sequencing pipelines; PRS construction hands-on; foundation-models-for-genomics tutorials.
Cross-cutting themes (for themes.md, deferred until post-meeting)¶
To synthesize across talks/ once populated:
- Cancer-PRS clinical utility moment. Cross-ancestry PRS transferability + biobank-scale validation may finally cross the threshold for trial-stratification adoption. Cross-link to AACR 2026 PRS sessions and ASCO 2026 breast / prostate biomarker-eligible trials.
- gnomAD v5 + ClinVar baseline. New population reference may re-classify a meaningful fraction of variants in hereditary-cancer panels. Cross-link to AACR 2026 variant-classification posters.
- Long-read clinical sequencing inflection. PacBio HiFi + ONT R10 quality at clinical scale — cross-link to AGBT 2026 platform talks.
- Foundation models for variant effect. AlphaMissense follow-ons + protein-language-model + DNA-LM successors. Cross-link to AACR 2026 ML-bio sessions and ISMB 2026.
- Somatic mosaicism beyond cancer. Methods sharing with cancer-ctDNA / clonal-evolution methodology.
- CHIP / CCUS at population scale. Bridge to ASH 2026 MDS / AML clinical talks.
- AoU + UK Biobank coordinated cancer readouts. Two cohorts both with ~mature cancer-genomics modules; pan-cancer germline-somatic at population scale is now feasible.