We are excited to share highlights from the 2026 APAC PRISM event, held this year in Fukuoka, Japan.
Located near Canal City, this PRISM event offered attendees the opportunity to combine scientific learning with local experiences, making this year’s event especially memorable and impactful.
This year’s program featured two days of scientific sessions covering the latest developments in HiFi sequencing.
Day 1 focused on population genomics, with leading researchers sharing key updates from ongoing large-scale population genomics projects. Attendees also had the opportunity to learn more about SPRQ-Nx, PacBio’s latest chemistry designed to reduce sequencing costs while increasing throughput and multiomics capabilities, helping make any sequencing project more powerful and cost-effective.
Day 2 highlighted one of PacBio’s core missions — advancing human health through precision medicine. The sessions showcased how HiFi sequencing is being applied in clinical research to help improve disease diagnosis, uncover complex genetic variants, and support precision medicine initiatives across a variety of disease areas.
Below we’ll share some of the key takeaways and highlights from the keynote presentations that made APAC PRISM 2026 such an inspiring event.
Day 1 highlights: Population genomics across Asia
Day 1 featured four keynote presentations showcasing how PacBio HiFi sequencing is driving large-scale population genomics and precision medicine initiatives across Asia.
The first keynote was delivered by Professor Kengo Kinoshita from the Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (ToMMo). He shared how ToMMo is leveraging PacBio Revio HiFi sequencing to build a Japanese genomic reference and structural variation resource. By combining long-read sequencing with prospective cohort and multiomics data, ToMMo is advancing population-specific precision medicine through accurate haplotype-resolved genome and methylation analysis.
The second keynote was presented by Professor John Chambers, Chief Scientific Officer of PRECISE (Precision Health Research, Singapore). He highlighted how PRECISE-SG100K is building a large multi-ethnic Singaporean cohort, with PacBio HiFi sequencing enabling long-read transcriptomics and native methylation profiling to generate high-resolution multiomics datasets for precision medicine.
Next, Professor Shuhua Xu from Fudan University introduced the vision of the Asian Pangenome Consortium (APC). Building on the recently published The 1000 Chinese Pangenome Empowers Medical and Population Genetics (Nature, 2026), the consortium is using PacBio HiFi sequencing to develop population-specific pangenome references while expanding into Iso-Seq, Fiber-seq, methylation, and T2T genome assemblies.
Figure 2 from Wang et al. (2026). The 1KCP pangenome and variant catalogue, indicating how HiFi long reads enable the discovery of previously inaccessible genomic sequences that cannot be represented by a single linear reference genome. a) Comparison of non-reference sequence sizes among the 1KCP, CPC and HPRC assemblies. b) Cumulative size of non-reference sequences as the sample size increases. c) Columns indicate the size of genomic elements in non-singleton non-reference sequences, whereas dots indicate their proportion relative to the total size of the corresponding elements in the pangenome. The dashed line indicates the proportion of non-singleton non-reference sequences relative to the total size of all non-singleton sequences in the pangenome.
The final keynote of the day was delivered by Dr. Supakit Sirilak, Director of Thailand’s Health Systems Research Institute (HSRI). Rather than focusing solely on genomic resource development, the Genomics Thailand Initiative demonstrated how genomics can be integrated into a national healthcare system. Following the successful completion of its 50,000-genome program in the first phase, Phase II will expect to include WGS, multiomics, single-cell sequencing, as well as infectious disease, pharmacogenomics, rare disease, oncology and carrier and newborn screening areas further supporting precision public health and clinical implementation.
Day 2 highlights: Clinical research powered by PacBio
Day 2 featured seven keynote presentations showcasing how PacBio HiFi sequencing is driving clinical research related to various disease.
Professor Stephen Turner of Monash University demonstrated how PacBio Fiber-seq can reveal chromatin accessibility, nucleosome positioning, transcription-factor footprints, and DNA methylation along individual DNA molecules during viral infection. Using PacBio Vega and Revio systems, his team mapped regulatory changes during killer T-cell differentiation at base-pair resolution, providing a more integrated view of immune-cell epigenetics than conventional short-read assays.
Dr. Rong Qiao at the Chinese University of Hong Kong highlighted how the polymerase kinetic information captured during PacBio HiFi sequencing can extend analysis beyond the DNA sequence itself. By combining these signals with a transformer-based model, the team accurately detected multiple native DNA modifications, including 5mC, 5hmC, and 6mA, demonstrating the potential of HiFi sequencing for epigenomic discovery, microbial research, and liquid-biopsy applications.
Dr. Jay Shin of A*STAR GIS presented the expansion of the Asian Immune Diversity Atlas through PacBio Kinnex and Revio sequencing, adding full-length transcript information to a large, multi-country single-cell resource. PacBio long-read transcriptomics enables isoform-level quantification, novel transcript discovery, and the identification of allele-linked expression and fusion transcripts, offering deeper insight into population-specific immune diversity and blood cancer biology.
Professor Yutaka Suzuki of the University of Tokyo shared a large-scale comparison of sequencing platforms across autism spectrum disorder families, highlighting the consistently high accuracy and reliable performance of HiFi sequencing. The PacBio data provided valuable resolution for structural variants, tandem repeats, phasing, and allele-aware methylation analysis needed to interpret genomic variation in regions that remain challenging for short-read sequencing.
Dr. Ashwin Dalal discussed the growing role of long-read sequencing in pediatric rare-disease research in India through the work of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, including its use alongside short-read and transcriptome data in the Undiagnosed Hackathon India initiative. Through this work, PacBio HiFi sequencing can help uncover structural, repeat-associated, and other complex variants that may be missed by conventional testing, supporting more comprehensive investigation of previously unresolved families.
Also at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Dr. Usha Dutta illustrated how long-read sequencing can move structural-variant analysis from broad detection to precise breakpoint resolution. Through rare-disease case studies involving large deletions and highly complex chromosomal rearrangements, the presentation showed how PacBio HiFi reads can provide the accuracy and long-range context needed to clarify variants that are difficult to reconstruct using conventional approaches. Many of these keynote sessions are now available on demand for those who would like to revisit the presentations.
Finally, Professor Joon-Yong An demonstrated how PacBio HiFi whole genome sequencing is uncovering autism-associated variants that are difficult to detect with conventional short-read sequencing. By combining long-read sequencing with the newly developed A2Denovo framework, his team improved de novo variant discovery and identified additional candidate variants in 44% of ASD probands, highlighting the power of HiFi sequencing for structural, tandem repeat, and regulatory variant analysis.
Beyond the keynotes, APAC PRISM 2026 featured a wide range of workshops and breakout sessions, creating valuable opportunities to exchange ideas, explore emerging applications, and build new collaborations. More than 200 genomics researchers from across Asia came together to share insights and strengthen a growing regional community focused on advancing genomic research and precision medicine.
We look forward to welcoming the community back at PRISM 2027, coming to a city near you. In the meantime, catch up on the talks from this year’s event here and relive the highlights from Fukuoka.
