London Calling 2025: one community driving discovery

In the heart of London at Old Billingsgate, with views of Tower Bridge and City Hall on its doorstep, we invited scientists from across the globe to showcase their innovative research at London Calling 2025.

When doors opened on the first day, over 400 delegates were welcomed with goodie bags and a view of the soaring vaulted ceilings of the Grand Hall. To the left, an illuminated tunnel opened into the auditorium, featuring an expansive screen and stage that spanned the width of the hall. Once the scientists, researchers, and students had entered the conference, the auditorium was filled with the hum of excitement.

Walking on stage to London Calling by The Clash, Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, officially kicked off the conference to discuss how we are ‘accelerating discovery’ and ‘turning it into rapid, point-of-care applications’. Below are some highlights of the compelling research presented over the past two days.

Revealing new genetic insights with large cohort studies

Starting the event were Nathalie Kingston and Kathy Stirrups from the NIHR BioResource, UK. The BioResource is a panel of up to 300,000 volunteers, both with and without health conditions, willing to participate in research projects. Nathalie and Kathy are trialling the use of ‘Oxford Nanopore technology to transform health research’ with blood and saliva samples across three large-scale translational studies. They intend to sequence up to 22,000 genomes to reveal new genetic insights into rare diseases and eating disorders, and to shed light on the heritability of dementia.

In the face of NIH travel restrictions, Kimberley Billingsley (National Institutes of Health, USA) joined us online to present a large cohort study of neurodegenerative diseases. She explained that despite neurodegenerative diseases affecting millions worldwide, many genetic variations remain unstudied due to the limitations of legacy short-read sequencing technologies. Here, she demonstrated that Oxford Nanopore sequencing allowed her team ‘to phase complex genetic variants, resolve repetitive regions, and capture methylation and transcriptomic data’, allowing them to ‘reveal more biology that short-read technologies miss’.

These large-scale cohort studies not only underscore the transformative power of Oxford Nanopore sequencing in uncovering previously inaccessible genetic variation, but also set the stage for how such insights can be translated into real-world clinical research. The speakers at the conference also looked to the future, exploring how the technology could be used to tackle complex genomic diseases where traditional methods fall short.

The future potential of Oxford Nanopore sequencing in clinical settings

Approximately 300 million people are impacted by rare diseases¹ and are on the ‘diagnostic odyssey’ to receive a genetic diagnosis; however, researchers at London Calling presented how they are hoping to change this with Oxford Nanopore sequencing.

Over the last decade, short-read sequencing has been used in clinical genomic research despite the lack of resolution and inability to characterise complex variants. All the way from Australia, Sebastian Lunke (Victorian Clinical Genetics Services, Australia) presented how he is using Oxford Nanopore sequencing to ‘provide a clearer picture of many complex genetic events’. He retrospectively analysed 30 diagnostic cases and confirmed complex variants in over 90% of these using targeted nanopore sequencing alone, highlighting how this method ‘really has the potential to replace a whole range of otherwise quite cumbersome and expensive orthogonal diagnostic tests without even doing whole-genome sequencing’.

Traditional genetic testing also often only provides a diagnosis in fewer than 50% of cases, as Danny E. Miller (University of Washington, USA) presented during the plenary panel on day two of the conference and hopes that ‘long reads will change clinical genetic testing’. Here, four speakers discussed the potential for implementing Oxford Nanopore sequencing in clinical settings and how it could replace current diagnostic and clinical workflows in the future.

Going beyond diagnostics, Karen Sherwood (The University of British Columbia & Vancouver General Hospital, Canada) showcased how nanopore sequencing could be used for monitoring transplant success in the future — preventing rejection by identifying high-risk individuals through genetic marker targeting with adaptive sampling.

This plenary panel highlighted the potential impact Oxford Nanopore sequencing could have in clinical settings, from ending the diagnostic odyssey to advancing transplant and precision medicine. During this panel, Marcel Nelen (UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands) — a brand-new nanopore user — also demonstrated the ease of implementing a PromethION device in his own lab to simplify a local, high-output, whole-genome sequencing workflow. This gives us a taste of how other new users across the globe could access high-output sequencing from their lab bench.

Making cancer classification accessible worldwide

Easy access to genetic screening is crucial for patient care worldwide, especially for diseases such as cancer, where there are disparities in survival rates globally². Aggressive cancers, such as acute leukaemia, require precise molecular classification for effective treatment. However, current diagnostic workflows are time-consuming and expensive, with delays impacting patient outcomes.

Salvatore Benfatto (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA) took to the stage to show how his team are potentially ‘moving acute leukaemia diagnostics from several days to a few hours’ with Oxford Nanopore sequencing and MARLIN — a specialised deep neural network model. By combining nanopore technology with MARLIN, he can access real-time methylation data to rapidly classify acute leukaemias and ‘call the fingerprint of these tumours’. Furthermore, due to the workflow’s simplicity, it is ‘very easy to implement anywhere in the world’.

Increased access to sequencing in low- and middle-income countries is becoming critical for successful cancer care. Specifically, Javeria Aijaz (Indus Hospital & Health Network, Pakistan) stated that in Pakistan, it is estimated that ‘less than 50% of paediatric cancer patients receive a proper cancer diagnosis’, highlighting the urgent need for improved diagnostics. Multiple researchers, including Javeria and Thomas Alexander (University of North Carolina, USA), demonstrated how they are utilising Oxford Nanopore technology, with its portability and scalability, to democratise access to sequencing, aiming to improve cancer diagnosis in low-income countries.

To tackle the burden of the disease, Kieran O'Neill (Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, Canada) discussed the Personalized Oncogenomics (POG) dataset. The POG dataset comprises short-read data of over 1,700 genomes to reveal the genetics behind cancer biology and to ultimately provide personalised treatment options. However, short reads miss crucial information such as complex variants. To advance the project, Kieran presented the long-read POG dataset, where Oxford Nanopore matched tumour-normal data was generated to reveal previously undetected variants and drive forward precision medicine.

While these talks highlighted how Oxford Nanopore sequencing is expanding access to precision cancer classification, researchers are also harnessing its strengths — speed, simplicity, and scalability — in a completely different domain: tackling infectious diseases through real-time microbial surveillance.

Improving antibiotic stewardship with real-time microbial surveillance

Access to rapid genomic sequencing is not only important for classifying aggressive cancers — it is also crucial for improving antibiotic stewardship. Currently, clinical microbial sequencing takes days, meaning that patients are given broad-spectrum antibiotics, which can be ineffective and increase antibiotic resistance.

Widespread adoption of culture-free microbial sequencing in the clinic could ultimately have a huge positive impact on public health strategies, including immediate access to actionable data during infectious disease outbreaks and improved control over antibiotic resistance globally.

Kicking off day two of the conference, Judith Breuer (UCL Institute of Child Health, UK) demonstrated how Oxford Nanopore sequencing can provide a rapid, culture-free workflow for the detection of pathogens in sterile sites and ‘is actually getting the results quicker than conventional methodologies’. Her team developed a single-platform workflow with a 12 to 24-hour turnaround time for highly sensitive and fast pathogen detection in sites such as the brain and blood, including identifying pathogens ‘only in the brain biopsy and not in any other sample’.

Similarly, Rafi Ahmad (University of Inland Norway and University of Tromsø, Norway and University of Southampton, UK) deployed a rapid nanopore sequencing workflow to analyse bacteria in urinary tract infections, ‘cutting short from what is currently two to four days [with conventional methods] to four hours’. Furthermore, with this method, they achieved ‘99% accuracy when it comes to pathogen ID and 91% accuracy when it comes to the [antibiotic susceptibility testing]’, potentially providing a means to save billions of doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics annually.

Rhys White (Institute of Environmental Science and Research, New Zealand) and Michael Wiley (University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA) also explained how microbial nanopore sequencing could potentially transform genomic surveillance of hospital-acquired infections. Specifically, Rhys explained that ‘by doing MinION sequencing onsite, we can get [the workflow] done within 24 to 48 hours’ — meaning effective measures could be implemented promptly. We caught up with them to find out how they are tackling antimicrobial resistance and improving infection control — watch out for their interviews soon!

Missed any of the live talks? Catch them online!

After two jam-packed days of talks, poster presentations, and demos, sandwiched between breaks and sweet treats including fresh fruit, ice cream, and pick ‘n’ mix, Gordon took to the stage on Thursday afternoon to close London Calling 2025. After presenting the wrap-up video from this year’s conference and thanking all those involved, Gordon invited everyone to raise a glass to celebrate the last two days.

This rounds up the innovation days at London Calling 2025. If you have missed any of the talks from the past two days, they are available to watch on demand from the London Calling platform until Thursday 29 May, after which they will be available on the Resource Centre from Tuesday 3 June.