On March 18, 2026 Inocras, a bioinformatics-led precision health company harnessing the power of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data and proprietary analytics, and the Broad Institute reported the upcoming release of key insights from whole-genome analysis of over 8,000 public cancer whole genomes. This analysis aims to deliver one of the largest genome-wide landscapes of somatic mutations across human pan-cancers.
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"NCI’s public The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) efforts have been central to many advances in cancer genomics, yet most of that progress has come from looking at a small portion of the genome," said Gad Getz, PhD, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, Director of Bioinformatics at the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research and Dept. of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Core Institute Member at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Joining him as a co-lead of the Broad–Inocras collaboration, Esther Rheinbay, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, added: "While genomic discovery has long centered on protein-coding genes, the vast ‘dark matter’ of the non-coding genome holds important clues to tumorigenesis. By looking at non-coding regulatory sequences, we are identifying candidate driver events that were previously missed by standard sequencing approaches". Dr. Getz further noted, "By providing a harmonized, high-quality whole-genome variant dataset across thousands of samples, this collaboration creates a standard reference for cancer whole genome studies that can uncover novel coding and non-coding driver events as well as new potential targets; moreover, it can be used to train next-generation AI and other computational models poised to reveal new insights and transform precision oncology".
Whole-genome sequencing is the next step for genomic discovery
Broad Institute and Inocras researchers teamed up to analyze thousands of high-quality whole cancer genomes released by NCI for the TCGA project. This dataset is the landmark cancer genomics program of the NCI that has molecularly characterized over 8,000 cases across 31 different cancer types with well-annotated clinical information and has been an invaluable resource for cancer research and for developing cancer diagnostics tools for nearly two decades. However, previous studies have been limited, relying primarily on whole-exome sequencing data analysis, leaving several key aspects understudied, including oncogenic driver mutations in non-coding regions, genomic rearrangements (structural variations; SVs), genome-wide copy number alterations (CNA), and mutational signatures. As a consequence, most routine cancer sequencing and discovery work has thus far relied on targeted gene panels that cover only a small fraction of the genome.
A harmonized dataset for cancer whole genomes
The Broad–Inocras collaboration moves the field to whole-genome coverage at scale: The whole genome analysis was performed using a bioinformatics pipeline by the Broad Institute and CancerVisionTM from Inocras in parallel, and then the two organizations harmonized the variant calls for the downstream analysis. All the data was consolidated into a single, frozen, and well-curated dataset to enable a consistent analysis across both groups and robust benchmarking of computational and AI methods. This effort represents a unified whole genome analytical framework for the TCGA dataset, establishing a new gold standard for cancer genome research.
"The powerful cancer whole genome pipelines of both organizations at production scale have made this project possible, while creating a robust tumor-normal whole genome cancer dataset," said Dr Young Seok Ju, Co-Founder of Inocras, Director of Genome Insight Institute and Associate Professor at KAIST. " The whole genome pipelines and dataset set the gold standard of cancer research, potentially unlocking the next wave of cohort studies, drug discovery, and AI-driven cancer research at a WGS level."
AACR Annual meeting 2026 sessions to present results from the Broad–Inocras collaboration and future initiatives
The key insights from this collaboration will be shared in different forums and poster sessions during the AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2026. Prof. Getz from the Broad Institute will present "New Insights from TCGA Whole-Genome Sequencing" during the Educational Session on Saturday, April 18th. In addition, the principal investigators from the Broad Institute and Inocras—including Prof. Getz; Dr. Rheinbay; and Youngseok Ju, MD, PhD, Co-founder of Inocras and Associate professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology—will jointly present data highlights and discuss future initiatives during the Exhibitor Spotlight session "TCGA and Beyond: Whole-Genome Data Powering the Next Era of Cancer Intelligence" on Monday, April 20th.
(Press release, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, MAR 18, 2026, View Source [SID1234663723])