Oxford Nanopore at ESHG 2026
Oxford Nanopore will be at the ESHG Conference at Booth 310 in June, 2026, hosted in Gothenburg. We will also host a Corporate Session on Monday, 15 June. See additional details below.
Corporate Session
Simplify without compromise: ask more of your workflow
Date: Monday, 15 June
Time: 12:15-13:30 hrs CEST
Location: Room A-3
Oxford Nanopore sequencing brings together comprehensive genetic variant and methylation detection, in one go. For complex disease research where scale is required, our simplified workflow means multi‑layered biological insights are being uncovered in thousands of samples, revealing more biology to transform human health. In this session, Dr Kathy Stirrups will share her work on eating disorders and show that multiomic analysis can be used to identify new variants and their function, deciphering mechanisms of disease that have the potential to be a target for treatment. She will also present results from the rare disease cohort in the NIHR-BioResource. The data-rich results not only build a foundation to better understand rare diseases, but also show the potential for diagnostic yield to improve in the future. Dr Koen Van Gassen will present how their laboratory at the Department of Genetics, University Medical Center in Utrecht, is implementing Oxford Nanopore whole-genome sequencing into their work. They are exploring whether this approach provides an opportunity to streamline multiple assays into a single test, reducing complexity, time, and costs.
Join us at our workshop to hear more from these speakers and learn about our updated solutions for human genomic analysis.
Agenda
12:15-13:30 | Talk title | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
12:15–12:25 | Welcome and introductions | Cora Vacher, Oxford Nanopore Technologies |
12:25–12:50 | NIHR BioResource: Advancing translational research with Omics technologies | Kathy Stirrups, NIHR BioResource |
12:50–13:15 | Development and assessment of a standardized nanopore sequencing workflow for clinical application | Koen van Gassen, University Medical Center Utrecht |
13:15–13:30 | Q&A | Moderated by Cora Vacher |
Speakers
Cora Vacher
- Job title
- Associate Director, Segment Marketing
- Institution
- Oxford Nanopore Technologies
- Biography
Cora Vacher is the Market Segment Associate Director for Human Genetic at Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Cora is passionate about genomics, in particular how genomics can help decipher and alleviate the burden of neurological diseases from neurodevelopmental to late onset neurodegenerative disorders. She came to the UK for a postdoctoral position on the genetics of Huntington’s disease in Cambridge and subsequently moved to commercial organisations.
Kathy Stirrups
- Job title
- Head of Samples Team
- Institution
- NIHR BioResource
- Biography
As Head of the Samples team at NIHR BioResource, Kathy is responsible for the biobanking of samples from participants and their feasibility and provision for research studies supporting translational medicine. She also manages bespoke large-scale projects generating genetic and other multi-omics data on the sample collection, to assess novel techniques for translation into healthcare systems. Current projects focus on Long Read whole genome sequencing at a population scale and RNA sequencing and proteomics in Rare Disease.
Koen van Gassen
- Job title
- Clinical Laboratory Geneticist
- Institution
- University Medical Center Utrecht
- Biography
Koen is a Clinical Laboratory Geneticist at the Department of Genome Diagnostics at UMC Utrecht, where he focuses on the innovation and quality improvement of genetic diagnostics. His expertise includes the genetics of developmental delay, metabolic diseases, and rare diseases, with a strong emphasis on translating emerging genomic technologies into clinical practice. Koen has a leading role in the implementation and optimization of advanced sequencing technologies and diagnostic workflows at UMC Utrecht. Recent work includes ongoing efforts to transition multiple existing diagnostic workflows toward a generic whole genome sequencing workflow.
On-booth drinks reception
Join the Oxford Nanopore team and other nanopore users at booth 310 to chat about current applications of our technology!
Date: Sunday, 14 June, 2026
Time: 16:00 CEST
On-booth presentations
Saturday, 13 June | Sunday, 14 June | Monday, 15 June | |
|---|---|---|---|
10:15 AM | Don’t forget the mighty mitochondria Rachel Martin, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Imprinting disorders uncovered: who did this variant come fro Heather Jeffery, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Don’t forget the mighty mitochondria Rachel Martin, Oxford Nanopore Technologies |
12:15 PM | See the full picture of human variation with Oxford Nanopore Sirisha Hesketh, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Redefining target enrichment: Adaptive sampling for digital panels Michael Jansen, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | See the full picture of human variation with Oxford Nanopore Sirisha Hesketh, Oxford Nanopore Technologies |
12:45 PM | Redefining target enrichment: Adaptive sampling for digital panels Andreas Klingenhoff, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | See the full picture of human variation with Oxford Nanopore Sirisha Hesketh, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Oxford Nanopore Corporate Session in room A-3 12:30–13:30 hrs |
4:15 PM | Solving the most complex genetic architectures with state-of-the-art de novo assembly Heather Jeffery, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Solving the most complex genetic architectures with state-of-the-art de novo assembly Heather Jeffery, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Decode RNA biology with cDNA and direct RNA sequencing Adrien Leger, Oxford Nanopore Technologies |
4:45 PM | Decode RNA biology with cDNA and direct RNA sequencing Adrien Leger, Oxford Nanopore Technologies | Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing of the UK biobank Doruk Beyter, Amgen deCODE genetics |
On-booth presentation descriptions
Don’t forget the mighty mitochondria
A novel approach to generating high coverage mitochondrial and WGS datasets from blood, enabling variant calling and methylation analysis of both genomes from a single dataset.
Imprinting disorders uncovered: who did this variant come from?
Delving into a Prader-Willi syndrome trio to identify the relationship between the structural variant, the methylation and the parent of origin.
See the full picture of human variation with Oxford Nanopore
In this demo, we'll show how the EPI2ME wf-human-variation workflow can be used to analyse human whole-genome Oxford Nanopore data, taking you from raw reads through to alignment and variant calling. The workflow comprises subworkflows that detect and phase small variants and indels, structural variants, and call larger copy number changes, as well as genotyping STRs.
Redefining target enrichment: Adaptive sampling for digital panels
In this demo, we'll show how the EPI2ME wf-human-variation workflow can be used to analyse human whole-genome Oxford Nanopore data, taking you from raw reads through to alignment and variant calling. The workflow comprises subworkflows that detect and phase small variants and indels, structural variants, and call larger copy number changes, as well as genotyping STRs.
Solving the most complex genetic architectures with state-of-the-art de novo assembly
An introduction to nanopore-only genome assemblies; when you might want to generate one, how might you go about producing one, what can you achieve with one.
Decode RNA biology with cDNA and direct RNA sequencing
Description TBC
