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HGVS Variant Nomenclature Committee (HVNC)#

The HGVS Variant Nomenclature Committee (HVNC) is authorised by the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), a working group of the HUGO Nomenclature Standards Committee, with administrative support of the HUGO office. Activities of the HVNC follow the committee's Terms of Reference with new members being appointed every two years for a four-year term. HVNC members should together represent all interested communities, including gene/disease specific database curators, central repositories, clinical geneticists, commercial diagnostic laboratories, bioinformaticians, scientific journals, etc. The HVNC is the successor of the HGVS nomenclature Sequence Variant Description Working Group (SVD-WG), initiated by the Human Variome Project.

Mission#

The mission of the HVNC is to define the standard for the unambiguous description of all sequence variants on the DNA, RNA, and protein level: the HGVS nomenclature.

HVNC members#

The HVNC started in 2013, initiated by Global Variome (GV) / the Human Variome Project (HVP).

Name Institution Term
Gwendolyn Bennett Quest Diagnostics, United States 2024 - 2028
Laura Conlin (ISCN representative) University of Pennsylvania, United States 2026 - ....
Johan den Dunnen (co-chair, term ends 2030) Leiden University Medical Center, Nederland 2013 - 2030
Marina DiStefano Broad Clinical Labs, United States 2022 - 2026
Ivo Fokkema Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands 2023 - 2026
Timothy Hefferon National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), United States 2024 - 2028
Jeroen Laros National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Nederlands 2022 - 2025
Hencher Lee Princess Margaret Hospital, Hong Kong 2024 - 2028
Matthew Stachowiak GenomOncology, United States 2024 - 2028
Alex Wagner (co-chair, term ends 2028) Nationwide Childrens Hospital, US 2022 - 2030

past HVNC members#

  • 2021 - 2026 : Ros Hastings (ISCN representative, United Kingdom)
  • 2022 - 2025 : Rachel Taylor (United Kingdom)
  • 2013 - 2024 : Reece Hart (United States)
  • 2018 - 2024 : Peter Freeman (United Kingdom)
  • 2021 - 2024 : Terence Murphy (United States)
  • 2013 - 2022 : Raymond Dalgleish (United Kingdom)
  • 2013 - 2022 : Peter Taschner (Nederland)
  • 2014 - 2021 : Anne-Francoise Roux (France)
  • 2020 - 2021 : Oleg Agofonov (Norway)
  • 2013 - 2021 :
    • Donna Maglott (United States)
    • Jean McGowan-Jordan (United States) (ISCN representative)
    • Stylianos Antonarakis (Switzerland) (HUGO representative)
    • Marc Greenblatt (United States) (HGVS representative)
    • Amy McAllister (United Kingdom) (HVP / GV representative)
  • 2013 - 2018 : Tim Smith (Australia) (HVP / GV representative)
  • 2013 - 2014 : Els Dequeker (Belgium)