Eligible Proposals

OICR places great emphasis on the support of individual, investigator-initiated grants within its scientific mission areas and will give priority to projects that support its translational research mandate, as specified in OICR’s Strategic Plan 2010-2015. Therefore, OICR invites proposals in the areas of personalized medicine for cancer patients, innovative solutions to the clinical issues identified in its SP, and enhancement and facilitation of digitization and interpretation of cancer data.

Eligible projects will evaluate biomarker or imaging-based tests for use as diagnostic, prognostic, predictive or treatment monitoring tools; propose novel clinical uses of therapeutic agents and technologies; and/or facilitate the development and commercialization of new agents or technologies for clinical use. Projects may focus on:

  1. Pre-clinical validation of potential therapeutic targets.
  2. Validation of biomarkers that will impact cancer prevention, early detection, treatment and monitoring of treatment effects (efficacy and safety).
  3. Clinical evaluation of new therapeutic agents/modalities that make use of biomarkers (e.g., clinical trial companion studies, economic analyses).
  4. Development of algorithms, data storage solutions, clinical tools for data visualization interfaces, and decision support tools or software that will enable the management and delivery of clinically-useful and easily interpretable information for health care providers.
  5. Health Services Research: Decision analyses or economic evaluations of emerging technologies, studies of the quality of molecular diagnostic services, and equitable access to personalized medicine are examples of relevant proposal topics. Linked, de-identified registry and administrative data are available through the ‘cd-link’ program.

Particular consideration will be given to projects addressing OICR’s five high priority clinical challenges for cancer patients, cancer survivors, physicians and public health. These five challenges are:

  1. The high fatality rate of pancreatic cancer.
  2. The over-diagnosis of prostate cancer.
  3. The over-aggressive treatment of early stage breast cancer.
  4. The insufficient participation in population-based screen programs with a focus on colon cancer screening.
  5. The long-term adverse effects of treatment affecting children and young adult cancer survivors.

Eligible research areas include:

1. Translational research: Pre-clinical validation of potential therapeutic targets, development of new agents, and genetic and proteomic studies to better characterize disease prognosis or to better predict response to therapy.

OICR will consider proposals ranging from in vitro validation of potential therapeutic targets through pre-clinical validation, to the clinical development of novel compounds. Proposals in this category may include requests for funding the development of novel enabling technologies, e.g., new targeted agents (small molecules and biological agents), new treatment approaches (immunotherapy, gene therapy, etc.) and novel imaging techniques or intervention devices. Requests for funding expenses associated with tissue and data acquisition from the Ontario Tumour Bank (OTB) will be considered.

2. Clinical trials/Clinical trial companion studies: Phase I and II clinical trials evaluating NEW therapeutic agents/modalities and NEW applications of existing therapies, as well as incorporation of new technologies to evaluate treatment effects and monitoring treatment response, i.e., biomarkers, new imaging technologies.

Proposals involving industrial partners and collaborative clinical trial groups are strongly encouraged. In these instances, the applicants must clearly indicate and justify the roles and contributions of industry or trial groups to the trial.

OICR will accept proposals for companion studies designed to characterize biomarkers, identify surrogate end points or develop efficacy assays only when associated with ongoing clinical trials. Applicants submitting companion studies must identify the corresponding ongoing trial, and include a letter of support from the leader of the clinical trial and/or the head of the cooperative supporting the trial, indicating that the applicant will have access to the trial database.

Applications proposing laboratory, pre-clinical and clinical studies related to personalized medicine must include an adequate statistical considerations section that describes the study design and analysis plan to address clearly-stated study objectives. Further details of the expectations for the statistical considerations are described below in the section “Bio-statistical Review”.

All applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with, and include in their study team, individuals with appropriate bio-statistical expertise as they develop their research proposal.

Access to OICR program/platform and other services

Cancer research requires access to infrastructure, platforms and resources that are not easily maintained or sustained by an individual researcher. Applicants to the PMRF will have access to a wide spectrum of technologies and services (e.g., genomics, proteomics, pharmacokinetics, imaging probe development, RNAi and high-throughput chemical screens) expertise and resources through OICR Platforms and Programs. Applicants are encouraged to seek collaborative arrangements through a variety of funding, contractual, and/or partnership mechanisms to obtain OICR Program and Platform services.

For details of OICR collaborative services, please click here.