Beyond the variant: hereditary cancer awareness in the multi-omics era

Hereditary cancer awareness has entered a new phase. For decades, awareness has focused on recognizing familial risk, identifying pathogenic germline variants, and helping families access counselling, surveillance and prevention. Yet in 2026, the main challenge is no longer only whether a variant can be detected, but how inherited risk can be interpreted, communicated and translated into action in the biological context of each tissue and tumor. The recent publication landscape of Hereditas illustrates this shift: cancer genetics is now inseparable from RNA regulation, epigenetics, metabolism, immune context, cellular plasticity, therapy resistance, computational modelling and precision intervention. This Editorial argues that hereditary cancer awareness must move beyond the variant without moving away from the familial risk. One step in this direction could be to use multi-omics as a bridge between genetic risk and precision prevention.