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On International Women’s Day, OICR scientists attended the first-ever Metamorphosis Girls STEM Conference at John Polanyi Collegiate Institute in Toronto. There, the researchers helped expose female grade seven and eight students to the various fields and career opportunities within science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) – with an emphasis on encouraging the next generation of female scientists to pursue a career in STEM fields.
Genetic tests are being used more commonly in the diagnosis of many types of cancer. However, there currently isn’t a highly accurate test that can identify men with aggressive forms of prostate cancer, making it more difficult to choose the most appropriate course of treatment.
New molecular barcode technology reduces error rate in genomic sequencing to 1 in 10,000
Toronto (March 9, 2017) – Researchers at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), together with international collaborators, have invented a technique to avoid a major problem with common laboratory techniques and improve the sensitivity of important cancer tests.
Ontario’s wealth of cancer research expertise is not limited to one city or region. Innovations from researchers and clinician-scientists across the province are changing the approach to cancer worldwide. London is one of Ontario’s major cancer research nodes and boasts a particular strength in developing medical imaging technology. The city is home to the Lawson Health Research Institute, Robarts Research Institute and the Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization. Life science and biotechnology research is the source of $1.5 billion in economic activity for the city annually.
Dusan Andric, a Software Developer at OICR, provides an introduction into the ideas, technologies, and use cases of distributed ledgers, blockchains and smart contracts.
Digital Detection Tool Will Be Shared Freely Over the Web
Toronto, ON and Baltimore, MD (February 23, 2017) A research team from the United States and Canada has developed and successfully tested new computational software that determines whether a human DNA sample includes an epigenetic add-on linked to cancer and other adverse health conditions.
Financing leverages and strengthens Ontario’s next-generation radiotherapeutics expertise, products
TORONTO, ON (February 23, 2017) – The Fight Against Cancer Innovation Trust (FACIT) and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) are pleased to report that Fusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Fusion) has closed a US$25M Series A financing, with Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) as the lead investor. Additional, new investors include venture groups HealthCap, TPG Biotechnology Partners, and Genesys Capital, as well as founding investor FACIT.
Biotherapeutics, a relatively new class of treatments, have shown great promise and are generating a lot of excitement in the cancer research community. These treatments harness the power of oncolytic viruses, cell therapies and antibodies to kill cancer. BioCanRX, Canada’s biotherapeutics research network, has announced $11 million in funding for 16 projects that will enable scientists across the country to bring their innovations to patients sooner.
Keeping track of samples and organizing their associated data is a crucial part of the research process. Like many labs around the world, those at OICR were using a commercially available Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to perform this task. However, the researchers using it found that this tool placed far too many constraints on their work. So what did they do? They built their own in partnership with the Earlham Institute (EI) in the U.K. This collaboration has resulted in powerful, flexible and open source software called MISO (Managing Information for Sequencing Operations).
Guest post by David Uehling, PhD, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, on behalf of the Chemistry In Cancer Research Working Group, part of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
The quest for a new cancer drug often begins when a protein target is implicated as an important driver in tumourigenesis. For cancer researchers, small molecules that block or stimulate such proteins can be valuable tools in research. Not only do they help us understand the role that the protein plays in cancer biology, but they also enable researchers to demonstrate which tumours are sensitive toward inhibition or stimulation with that protein target of interest, providing early clues as for patient selection and biomarker identification. Moreover, the knowledge that a small molecule can bind to such a protein builds confidence that this target is indeed “druggable,” which can provide a powerful stimulus to initiate a sustained effort to find medicines for that target.
