OICR's investment in Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network showing excellent returns
Dr. Ken Evans
(CPimages/S.Sacco)
It has been just three years since the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network (OCBN) entered the emerging field of biomarker research armed with a new model for studying potential targets for cancer treatment. In that time, Dr. Ken Evans and his team have managed not only to fulfill their mandate to create a self-sustaining biomarker research facility, but also to gain a reputation for sparking new collaborations.
OCBN was founded in 2005 with $6-million in funding from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), which is funded by the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Research Innovation. The aim was to create a group that could conduct research on cancer biomarkers and provide contract research services to academic and industry researchers working on projects that involve biomarkers.
Scientists look for biomarkers, which are molecules expressed by a gene or protein and found in blood, to confirm the existence of a disease, the risk of developing that disease or its likely course of progression. They also tell researchers whether a particular drug is effective. Biomarkers could be used to screen healthy people at risk of developing a disease so they can take preventive steps and receive regular testing.
From their state-of-the-art facility in the MaRS Centre, Evans and his colleagues have spent the last three years forming partnerships with other Ontario researchers and conducting research using cutting-edge techniques like mass spectrometry. Recently, they have been broadening their collaborations and working directly with clinical researchers to get new projects off the ground.
“We’ve been actively seeking clinical teams that have good questions and need analytical work done,” Evans explains. “We work with them as research partners, and sometimes as investors, in the preliminary stages. Once we get enough early-stage work done, we co-apply with them for a grant.”
OCBN and clinical researchers have already come together to get funding for projects in numerous cancer sites, including bladder, prostate and breast cancers and several programs are ongoing with industry partners to assist in their development of “personalized” therapies. OCBN is actively exploring other collaborations with both academic and industry researchers.
In another initiative, OCBN is playing a key role in building up the research computing infrastructure in the province. In a project supported by OICR, they have started creating centralized services for proteomics that make use of the high-performance computing cluster at Queen’s University in Kingston. When fully implemented, the project will allow researchers who are members of OCBN to access supercomputing power from their desktops.
“The range of research services that OCBN has managed to set up is really impressive, considering they have only had a few years to build up their programs from scratch. In addition to facilitating research at other institutes, they’re also becoming an important scientific organization in their own right,” says Dr. Bob Phillips, Deputy Director of OICR. “I’m confident Dr. Evans and his group will continue to impress us over the next few years.”
Having achieved the key goals in its original three-year plan, OCBN is now planning a five-year strategy that will see the organization collaborate with more partners and continue launching new and innovative research programs and services.
“Now that we’re self-sustaining and working on projects related to most of the major cancer types, we’re looking at expanding our role to become an investor in biomarker research,” Evans says. “The really exciting thing about our progress is that at every stage, our model is helping to get new projects off the ground – and that was the whole idea behind OCBN.”
