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Single-Cell Genomics 2026 — Program Notes

Pre-meeting prep covering the GRC Single-Cell Genomics (May 10–15, Les Diablerets) and Wellcome Single Cell Biology (Jun 10–12, Hinxton). Written mid-GRC (May 11, 2026) when the GRC is in-session but closed-door and Wellcome is a month out with the speaker list public since Apr 22.

Dates and venues — at-a-glance

Meeting Dates Venue Format Capacity Status
GRC SCG (GRS) Sat–Sun May 9–10, 2026 Les Diablerets Conference Center, Eurotel Victoria, Switzerland In-person, single-track ~50 Closed (application deadline was Apr 11)
GRC SCG (main) Sun May 10 – Fri May 15, 2026 Les Diablerets, same venue In-person, single-track, closed-door ~200 In-session this week; oversubscribed
Wellcome SCB Wed–Fri Jun 10–12, 2026 Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK Hybrid (in-person + virtual) ~250 in-person In-person reg closes May 11; virtual closes Jun 1

Travel: GRC participants typically fly into Geneva (GVA) or Zurich (ZRH), then 90-min rail to Aigle → cogwheel to Les Diablerets. Wellcome attendees fly into LHR/STN/LTN, then ~50 min by car/bus to Hinxton. Same-week back-to-back attendance is unusual but plausible for senior PIs; expect the same ~20–30 people at both meetings.

Chair / committee

  • GRC SCG 2026 chair: Angela Oliveira Pisco (CZ Biohub formerly; current role per LinkedIn — Insitro). Co-organizer of GRC SCG 2024 with Zhuang, Fan, and Xie. Chair-elect for the GRS strand is not publicly named but historically a rising-PI from the same network.
  • Wellcome SCB 2026 organizing committee: Leeat Keren (Weizmann — spatial proteomics / MIBI), Cole Trapnell (UW — Monocle / sci-RNA-seq lineage), Roser Vento-Tormo (Sanger — tissue atlases / CellPhoneDB / spatial). All three have AACR-axis publications. Trapnell + Vento-Tormo are recurring committee members across years; Keren is new for 2026.

Anticipated top-5 themes for the 2026 SCG cohort

Cross-cutting between the two meetings, ranked by expected oral-talk count + AACR overlap:

  1. Foundation models for single-cell omics. scGPT-v2 and Geneformer-v2 successor work, perturbation-prediction foundation models (Bunne's CellFlow lineage at EPFL), Universal Cell Embeddings + scPRINT updates. The GRC subtitle ("Accelerating Medical Discovery With Single Cell Omics and Machine Learning") and the GRS topic ("AI and ML for Single-Cell and Spatial Omics") both center this. AACR overlap: AACR 2026 agentic-AI dossier + foundation-model sessions.
  2. Spatial transcriptomics at scale. Visium HD analysis tooling, Xenium-native pipelines, CosMx integration, MERSCOPE/MERFISH analysis, ISS (Nilsson). The Wellcome "spatial technologies" session and the GRC "Spatial and Proteomics Analysis" session both anchor this. AACR overlap: the AACR single-cell-spatial topic has 8 strong-fit sessions cross-listed.
  3. Multimodal single-cell + integration. CITE-seq successors, Multiome + methylation + RNA, ATAC+RNA at scale, proteo-genomics. The Wellcome "beyond transcriptomics" session and the GRC "Epigenomics" + "3D Genomics" sessions. AACR overlap: AACR 2026 hematology + multimodal sessions.
  4. Lineage tracing and perturbation atlases. Recording-based lineage (Loveless at Rice, Gagnon at Utah), Perturb-seq successors, drug-response atlases. Wellcome speakers center this; the GRC "Single-Cell Modeling" session will cover the analytical side. Crosses with the EMBO Lineage Tracing 2026 meeting (Mar 2026, separate).
  5. Cancer single-cell with clinical translation. Single-cell atlases of disease states, biomarker discovery from scRNA / spatial, clinical-trial-adjacent applications. The GRC "Applications in Medicine" session is explicitly this. Direct AACR overlap: AACR 2026 has 8 single-cell + spatial sessions and 1,015 poster abstracts in this topic.

Cross-vault overlap watch

Authors and tools known or strongly expected to appear at both SCG-2026 and elsewhere in the corpus:

Person SCG-2026 role Other corpus appearances
Cole Trapnell Wellcome organizer + talk AACR 2026 (single-cell-spatial topic Sun 4/19 + Mon 4/20 sessions cite Monocle pseudotime); EuroBioC indirectly (Monocle has a Bioc wrapper); CSHL BDS 2026 (spatial session likely cites sci-Space)
Roser Vento-Tormo Wellcome organizer + talk AACR 2026 (CellPhoneDB used in 20+ poster abstracts in single-cell-spatial topic); HCA / HuBMAP infrastructure axis
Leeat Keren Wellcome organizer + large-scale AACR 2026 (MIBI + spatial-proteomics — Mapping Neural-Immune Circuits session 4/18, Spatial Biomarkers session 4/21); ESMO 2026 (clinical spatial-proteomics)
Charlotte Bunne Wellcome computational RECOMB 2026 (ML for biology); ISMB 2026 MLCSB; AACR 2026 agentic-AI dossier (foundation-model adjacency); ICML 2026 (likely)
Mats Nilsson Wellcome spatial AGBT 2026 (ISS platform reference); AACR 2026 spatial sessions
Sizun Jiang Wellcome spatial AACR 2026 (3D Tissue Imaging + Spatial Biomarkers); SITC 2026 (immune spatial)
Céline Vallot Wellcome beyond-transcriptomics AACR 2026 (epigenetics + cancer single-cell sessions); HTAN
Ido Amit Wellcome keynote AACR 2026 (MARS-seq + immune atlases cited in multiple sessions); ASH 2026 (clinical hematology atlases)

Anticipated cross-links (GRC, will confirm post-meeting)

GRC speaker list is closed. Based on the published session structure + the AI/ML subtitle + Pisco's network at Insitro / CZ Biohub, expected speakers include some subset of: Aviv Regev (Genentech), Dana Pe'er (MSKCC), Fabian Theis (Helmholtz Munich — scGen / scVI line), Bo Wang (Toronto — scGPT), Christina Leslie (MSKCC — chromatin), Rahul Satija (NYGC — Seurat), Caleb Lareau (MSK — scATAC), Jeffrey Janes / Anjali Tarun / Yan Wang (CELLxGENE-adjacent), and a Sanger contingent (Vento-Tormo crossover, plus Sarah Teichmann's lab line). Confirm post-meeting from preprint signals and Bluesky.

Tools where SCG-2026 talks could plausibly mention or update them, with the corresponding AACR / EuroBioC / sibling-vault entry:

  • scGPT / Geneformer / scFoundation ↔ AACR 2026 agentic-AI dossier (foundation-models surface)
  • CellPhoneDB / CellChat / NicheNet (cell-cell communication) ↔ AACR 2026 single-cell-spatial topic (heavy use in TME sessions: Macrophages 4/18, Neural-Immune Circuits 4/18, Fibroblast Dynamics 4/18)
  • SpatialData / DESpace / OSTA / spatialFDA ↔ EuroBioC 2025 (Marconato, Cai, Dong+Patrick, Emons)
  • Voyager / Visium-HD analysis ↔ CSHL BDS 2026 spatial session (anticipated)
  • scVI / scANVI / scArches ↔ ICML / NeurIPS appearances + AACR sessions using batch-corrected atlases
  • CellTypist ↔ AACR 2026 atlas-annotation poster pipelines (Vento-Tormo)
  • Monocle3 / sci-RNA-seq / sci-Space ↔ AACR 2026 trajectory analyses (Trapnell)
  • cell2location / Tangram / CytoSPACE ↔ AACR 2026 spatial-deconvolution methods
  • CELLxGENE Census / HCA / Tabula Sapiens / HTAN ↔ atlas-infrastructure cross-cutting

Information-extraction strategy

  • GRC (May 10–15, off-the-record): wait 2–6 weeks post-meeting, then scrape bioRxiv for "Gordon Research Conference" or "GRC" or "Single-Cell Genomics" in acknowledgements/funding sections. Cross-reference with Pisco's lab Bluesky / X feed for any blessed sharing. Most reliable signal: preprints that drop May 20 – Jul 5 from labs known to have attended.
  • Wellcome (Jun 10–12, hybrid): scrape Wellcome event page on Jun 5 for finalized schedule + abstract titles (typically posted ~1 week before). Tune #SingleCell26 on Bluesky/X during the meeting. Wellcome keynotes go to YouTube channel @WellcomeGenomeCampus post-meeting; selected short talks sometimes too. Speaker slides occasionally to Zenodo or lab sites.
  • Post-meeting bulk extraction (Jul 2026): one pass after both meetings + 4 weeks of preprint drops, building ~30–40 tool pages. Use the EuroBioC 2025 / CSHL BDS 2026 pattern — codex-driven extraction once the template is locked.

What is and isn't covered

  • Covered: GRC Single-Cell Genomics 2026 + GRS, Wellcome Single Cell Biology 2026.
  • Not covered (separate vaults or out-of-scope):
  • EMBO Lineage Tracing 2026 (Mar 2026, Heidelberg) — separate EMBO meeting, captured as side-reference in tools/lineage pages but not a vault yet.
  • 3rd Probing Human Disease using Single-Cell Technologies (Fusion Conferences, Mar 1–4, 2026, Playa Mujeres) — industry-leaning, AACR-cancer-axis overlap exists but small attendance + low public-record makes a vault not worth the effort.
  • EMBL Brain (epi)genome Symposium (Apr 21–24, 2026, Heidelberg) — neuro-focused, captured as side-reference in any neuro-overlap tool pages but not a vault.
  • Advances in Single Cell and Spatial Biology 2026 (commercial conference series) — sponsor-heavy, low signal-to-noise, not in scope.
  • CSHL Single Cell Analyses — does not run in 2026 (CSHL BDS 2026 occupies the methods slot; see cshl-bds-2026/).
  • Joint ASCB-EMBO 2026 (Dec 2026, San Diego) — broad cell biology, single-cell is a small fraction; possible separate vault if a single-cell track is announced.
  • Keystone single-cell symposia — none in 2026 with a single-cell-anchor title; the 2026 Keystone calendar has spatial-biology-adjacent meetings but no SCG-flagship slot.

Calibration: what could go wrong

  • Pisco / GRC discretion is tighter than expected. If no preprints surface with "GRC SCG 2026" acknowledgement and Bluesky stays quiet, the GRC half of this vault stays sparse. Fallback: build the Wellcome half thoroughly and treat the GRC half as a watch-list rather than a tool index.
  • Wellcome program changes between Apr 22 and Jun 10. Some speaker drops always happen; final session-to-day mapping isn't finalized until ~1 week pre-meeting. Pre-scaffolded tool pages should reference "Day TBD" until Jun 5 schedule scrape.
  • Foundation-model hype peaking. If GRC and Wellcome both end up being 50%+ foundation-model talks, the tool index becomes lopsided. Counter-axis: make sure spatial / multimodal / lineage / non-model entries get equal extraction effort.
  • Industry talks invisible. Neither meeting has a paid sponsor track, so 10x / Vizgen / Curio / Singleron / Element / Parse Biosciences platform updates won't appear in talks. Those are captured in agbt-2026/ and trade-press writeups; cross-link from SCG tool pages where relevant rather than re-extracting.

Sources

See index.md → Sources. Additionally, post-meeting:

  • bioRxiv search filter: ("Gordon Research Conference" OR "GRC") AND ("single-cell" OR "single cell" OR "scRNA") for May 15 – Jul 15, 2026 window.
  • bioRxiv search filter: "Wellcome Single Cell Biology" OR #SingleCell26 for Jun 10 – Jul 31, 2026 window.
  • Bluesky search: #SingleCellGenomics #SingleCell26 #SCG2026 from May 10 onward.
  • Pisco lab site / X / Bluesky: track for any blessed-sharing posts.
  • Wellcome YouTube channel: @WellcomeGenomeCampus for post-meeting keynote uploads.