VCCC Alliance Precision Oncology Forum

Advancing genomic knowledge sharing for cancer variant interpretation

24 March 2026

Advancing genomic knowledge sharing for cancer variant interpretation

Clinical variant interpretation is driven by shared genomic knowledge produced through community efforts such as the ClinGen Somatic Variant Curation Expert Panels (SC-VCEPs).

International speaker Dr Alex Wagner, speaks about current practices for generating structured variant interpretation knowledge from SC-VCEPs using the CIViC platform and disseminating these data to downstream resources through GA4GH Genomic Knowledge Standards.

A case study illustrates how these standards and tools support knowledge dissemination in a clinical laboratory setting.

Chairs

Dr Huiling Xu
Senior Research Fellow, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

Dr Joep Vissers
Curation Scientist Team Leader, the University of Melbourne

Speaker

Dr Alex Wagner
Assistant Professor, Institute for Genomic Medicine, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University

Dr Wagner's research focuses on computational genomics, variant interpretation, and the development of standards and infrastructure for sharing genomic knowledge in precision medicine. He is a Principal Investigator of the ClinGen Somatic Cancer consortium and the CIViC cancer variant knowledgebase, co-lead of the GA4GH Genomic Knowledge Standards Work Stream, and chair of the HGVS variant nomenclature committee. His laboratory develops tools and data standards that enable interoperable exchange of variant interpretation knowledge across community resources and clinical systems, with a focus on improving genomic evaluation of pediatric cancers.