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Third major accreditation to help OICR Genomics power next generation of precision medicine

Lab is the first in North America to have whole genome and transcriptome sequencing assay accredited by CAP, CLIA and ACD.

April 4, 2023, TORONTO — Becoming the first genomics lab to be accredited by three of the leading North American accreditation organizations positions OICR Genomics to generate new discoveries about what drives diseases like cancer and new, personalized ways to diagnose and treat them.

The lab earned a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certificate of accreditation in January 2023 for its whole genome and whole transcriptome sequencing assay, a comprehensive genetic test that can find all changes in the DNA of a tumour. This comes after accreditation from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) in 2021 and from Accreditation Canada Diagnostics (ACD) — formerly IQMH — in 2022.

“This unprecedented ‘trifecta’ of accreditation shows the lab’s commitment to the highest possible standards of quality and how OICR is leading the way in developing new precision genomic medicine,” says OICR President and Scientific Director Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi. “I congratulate the OICR Genomics team for setting the standard in next-generation sequencing and setting the stage for major innovations as well as taking this major step towards our quest to adopt whole genome/transcriptome sequencing as a mainstay for the clinical management of patients.”

Genomics has become one of the core disciplines for researching cancer and other diseases. Researchers are harnessing data from DNA and RNA sequencing to help detect diseases earlier than ever before and identify treatments that give patients the best possible chance at beating them. Understanding what is driving an individual’s cancer at the genetic level can reveal treatments that specifically target and disrupt those pathways. OICR Genomics has supported many cutting-edge research projects with a range of high-quality genomics services, and has spent several years building infrastructure and refining procedures to ensure it exceeds national and international standards and meets the needs of researchers now and into the future.

“Achieving and maintaining these accreditations has taken a lot of hard work and diligence,” says Dr. Carolyn Ptak, Genomics Program Manager and Quality Assurance Lead. “Our team has shown incredible dedication to quality and innovation, and we are all proud to be part of a laboratory that is internationally recognized for operating at the highest possible standard.”

With accreditations from CLIA, CAP and ACD, OICR Genomics can support academic and clinical research projects on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, generating data that can influence patient care as part of clinical trials and power innovations that transform precision medicine.

“This recognition should give academic and clinical researchers confidence they can trust OICR Genomics to deliver accurate, reproducible data for all varieties of research programs,” says Dr. Trevor Pugh, OICR Senior Investigator and Director of Genomics. “We are grateful for the close collaboration with the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the broader University Health Network who helped shape and validate our clinical research tests, and we are excited for the innovative new projects these capabilities enable and for the impact clinical genomics will have on the health of Ontarians and people around the world.”

“Our government is focused on supporting the long-term economic growth of the province and building a strong future for Ontarians by making key investments in research and innovation,” said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities. “Congratulations to OICR for achieving this impressive accreditation milestone, which will help the organization expand the scope of its work and take part in exciting new projects that have the potential for earlier cancer detection and improved treatments for cancer patients in Ontario.”

OICR Genomics is a part of the Joint Genomics Program of the University Health Network (UHN) and OICR, an integrated initiative to support basic, translational and clinical research.

For more information or to book an interview, contact:
Daniel Punch
Senior Communications Officer, OICR
daniel.punch@oicr.on.ca
647-291-4583

‘Upswing’ in patient partnership presents opportunities for impact, says new PFAC chair

Beth Ciavaglia takes over as chair of OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) with plans to harness an exciting time for patient partnership.


With engaged patient partners and a supportive organization, Beth Ciavaglia says OICR’s Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) is poised to make its mark on cancer research in Ontario.

That’s why she put her name forward to become PFAC chair when outgoing chair Diana Lemaire announced she was stepping down earlier this year.

Ciavaglia has been a PFAC member since the council launched back in early 2021. As a breast cancer survivor, physiotherapist and long-term care administrator she brings a unique perspective to the group.

She says her experience with PFAC so far has surpassed her expectations. She has always felt welcomed into the OICR community and felt her input was appreciated by researchers.

“There is an intentionality to how OICR involves PFAC in all aspects of its work, and our involvement has never felt performative,” Ciavaglia says.

Though not every organization has embraced patient partnership equally, she says she has seen a lot of progress recently. The infrastructure for patient partnership has matured across Canada and there are more and more opportunities for patients to shape the health system.

“I feel like patient partnership is really on the upswing, and PFAC is perfectly positioned to be leaders in this space,” she says.

Ciavaglia credits her predecessor Lemaire, inaugural chair Antonia Palmer, her other patient partner colleagues and OICR’s staff and executive for laying the groundwork for authentic patient partnership.

Lemaire, who is staying on as PFAC member, agrees that people are the group’s biggest strength.

“The best part of my time as chair has been working with such extraordinary people,” she says. “It has been an honour to lead OICR’s PFAC and I believe that our council has made significant contributions to advancing patient partnership across the organization.”

To build on this foundation, Ciavaglia wants to continue fostering trust among OICR patient partners. That includes PFAC as well as OICR’s Patient Community, a growing network of patients that Ciavaglia says is a tremendous asset.

“I am excited about how we are growing our patient partnership community, not just by volume, but by giving everyone a real opportunity to make an impact,” she says.

Nearly four years since being diagnosed with cancer, Ciavaglia says working with OICR has given her hope as a cancer survivor and patient advocate.

“It really has been a pleasure to be involved,” she says. “There are a few silver linings that I have found as a cancer survivor, and this is one of them.”

The Next Generation: Hector Gonzalez Alvarez

PhD candidate contributes to drug discovery collaboration targeting childhood brain cancer.

For Hector Gonzalez Alvarez, a career in cancer research is a way to create hope for families just like his.

Gonzalez is a fourth-year PhD student on OICR’s Drug Discovery team, where he works with Dr. Rima Al-awar on potential therapeutics for childhood brain cancer.

While chemistry has always interested Gonzalez academically, studying cancer therapeutics is extra meaningful because his of his family’s experiences with cancer.

“I’ve personally seen the struggles that cancer patients and their families have to go through,” says Gonzalez, who grew up and earned his undergraduate degree in Mexico. “I took this as strong motivation to join the cancer research community.”

Gonzalez works on a project involving OICR, the Structural Genomics Consortium and M4K Pharma aiming to develop small molecules that target the ALK2 enzyme, which studies suggest is critical to the development of a brain tumour called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).

There are currently no drugs to treat DIPG, which is a particularly aggressive tumour that affects young children. Gonzalez hopes his work can help expand knowledge of DIPG’s biology and one day lead to effective treatment options for DIPG.

“I hope that at some point one of these compounds will become a clinical candidate and will bring some hope to children and to their families.”

International Women’s Day: How can we build momentum for women in STEM?

With International Women’s Day approaching on March 8, Dr. Michelle Brazas, Associate Director, Adaptive Oncology, shares her perspective on the contributions of women to science, challenges faced by women working in research and ways to break down these barriers.

The Next Generation: Kimberly Skead

Rising star cancer researcher is leading a cutting-edge study and supporting other up-and-coming scientists

Kimberly Skead says it’s a very exciting time to be cancer research trainee. And she’s certainly making the most of it.

Skead is a University of Toronto PhD candidate based in Dr. Philip Awadalla’s OICR lab, where she is leading cutting-edge research to understand how changes in our DNA affect our risk of cancer. She also serves as National Scientific Coordinator of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath), where she plays a key role in the country’s largest population cohort study.

Beyond her own research, Skead is also empowering other up-and-coming researchers. She co-leads the Ontario Rising Stars in Cancer Research Network, which connects and supports trainee cancer researchers across the province.

As she nears the end of her PhD studies, Skead says she’s excited for all the opportunities ahead of her and her fellow trainees. With increased collaboration between public and private sector researchers, she says there are more chances than ever to make an impact.

“We can start asking questions we’ve never been able to ask before,” says Skead, “and hopefully advance our progress toward a cure for cancer.”

OICR researchers join Lancet commission to tackle inequities in precision cancer care

Dr. Mélanie Courtot and Dr. Lincoln Stein will investigate ways to overcome barriers to sharing and integrating global genomics data.


An international effort to harness genomics data and spread precision cancer care around the world launched this week and two OICR researchers will play key roles.

Dr. Mélanie Courtot and Dr. Lincoln Stein join a team of experts on the Lancet Oncology Commission focused on cancer genomics and precision oncology, which will investigate barriers to accessing genomics-driven cancer diagnostics and therapies — particularly in low- and middle-income countries — and present practical solutions to overcome them.

Recent discoveries about how DNA variants affect our risk of cancer and response to medications, and new technologies to test for these variants, have allowed for cancer treatment to be tailored to a patient’s specific genetic makeup. But the technology and data needed to personalize cancer care is not available to most of the world, challenged by logistical, regulatory and financial barriers.

“This commission has the ambitious goal of improving the lives of people affected by cancer and their families and driving the evolution of precision oncology over the next decades,” Dr. Raffaella Casolino, who co-leads the commission with her University of Glasgow colleague Dr. Andrew Biankin, said in a news release.

Led by the University of Glasgow, the commission will involve organizations including the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO), Latin American Cooperative Oncology Group (LACOG), African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer, the Asian Oncology Society (AOS), the Global Alliance for Genomic and Health (GA4GH), the International Quality Network for Pathology (IQN Path), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and many others.

It will be coordinated by the International Cancer Genome Consortium: Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ICGC-ARGO), a project to harmonize and share global genomics data for improved cancer diagnosis and treatment. Courtot leads the ICGC-ARGO Data Coordination Centre as part of her role as Director of Genome Informatics at OICR. Stein is Head of Adaptive Oncology at OICR and leads the ICGC Data Coordination and Management Working Group.

For the Lancet commission, Courtot and Stein will lead a working group on data processing, which will explore technical solutions to improve genomics data sharing and integration across the world. They are also both co-authors of the Lancet paper announcing the commission.

Courtot says it’s critical that genomic data sets are representative of the global population. “If we want more equitable cancer care for eight billion people around the world, the diversity of our data will need to be expanded and worldwide data will need to be integrated,” she says.

Stein says there are several regulatory and ethical challenges that will need to be overcome. “One of the biggest challenges of moving data across borders is balancing patient confidentiality against the benefits of doing research with large data sets.” he says. “We’ll be looking at technical solutions, such as federated learning models, which could allow for data analysis without having to move the data around.”

Other working groups will focus on overcoming challenges in clinical translation, ethics, implementation, education and training. The commission’s findings and recommendations will be widely distributed in The Lancet.

This story was adapted from a news release by the University of Glasgow.

How research is helping “close the care gap” in cancer

OICR-supported researchers are helping understand inequities in cancer care and finding solutions to address them.

Research has brought about major advancements in detecting, diagnosing and treating cancer that are helping patients live longer and better than ever.

But the benefits of these innovations are not felt equally. Unacceptable gaps exist between different regions and socioeconomic groups that perpetuate disparities in cancer outcomes, even in wealthy countries like Canada and the U.S.

For example, Black men in the U.S. are twice as likely to die of prostate cancer than white men, while South Asian women in Canada were more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at later stages, when it is more difficult to treat, than women from other backgrounds.

Some disparities are the result of genetic differences in people’s susceptibility to cancer, while others are related to social, economic and environmental factors. But more data is needed to fully understand inequities and how to address them.

So as the global community comes together to “close the care gap” on World Cancer Day, researchers have a unique role to play.

OICR is one of many cancer research organizations working to close the care gap by promoting diversity in science and prioritizing studies that tackle inequities head on.

Here are just a few ways OICR-supported researchers are doing their part:

Researchers are helping understand inequities

Dr. Melanie Spears is leading a project to improve targeted breast cancer treatment for Black and Asian women.

Dr. Melanie Spears

Spears and colleagues will compare genomic data between Black and Asian women and other communities to understand the role ethnicity plays in the genes that drive breast cancer. This help provides insights on into how ethnicity affects a woman’s risk of breast cancer, why certain treatments may not be as effective for Black or Asian women, and which treatments could work better for them.

“We are investigating the impact of ethnicity in the biology of breast cancer and developing personalized tools to diagnose and treat Black and Asian women that will help make breast cancer care more equitable.” – Dr. Melanie Spears, Co-Director of Diagnostic Development at OICR

Dr. Yvonne Bombard is leading a study to understand the nature and extent of racial disparities in cancer genomics in Ontario.

Dr. Yvonne Bombard

While new discoveries about the relationship between DNA and cancer can help screen high-risk populations and pinpoint the right treatment options, Bombard says racialized communities don’t have the same access to genetic services as people of European descent. These communities are less likely to be referred for genetic testing and more likely to receive a misdiagnosis because they are not adequately represented in the genetic databases the tests are built on.

“Genomics has enormous potential to transform cancer care, but only if genomic services are accessible by everyone. By digging deeper to understand why and how certain populations are underserviced, we can close the current gaps in genomic medicine and make sure the entire population benefits.” – Dr. Yvonne Bombard, Scientist at Unity Health and OICR Associate

The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath) is expanding its data cohort to ensure more populations and geographic regions are represented.

Health inequities are caused by both genetic and environmental factors, and CanPath is Canada’s largest population cohort study exploring how genetics, environment, lifestyle and behaviour contribute to cancer and other chronic diseases. The study recently launched a plan to become more representative of Canada’s population by recruiting new participants from historically underrepresented populations and working with leaders in remote communities. By better reflecting the ethnic and geographic diversity in Canada, CanPath can provide even more insight on how cancer develops and why different groups experience cancer differently.

Researchers are removing barriers to access

Dr. Natasha Kekre developed Canada’s first platform for manufacturing CAR-T cells and is offering them to eligible Canadians through a clinical trial.

Dr. Natasha Kekre

CAR-T cell therapy is one of the most exciting recent innovations in cancer treatment, where a patient’s immune system is “trained” to find and kill cancer cells. It has given hope to cancer patients who have not responded to other treatment options, but many Canadians have had to travel internationally and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to access it.

“By creating domestic manufacturing and clinical trial sites across Canada for CAR-T cells through the CLIC platform, we are closing this gap by bringing more Canadians all across Canada access to this innovative and potentially life-saving therapy.” – Dr. Natasha Kekre, Scientist and Hematologist at The Ottawa Hospital

Dr. Caroline Hamm created a program to connect cancer patients with clinical trials, regardless of where they live.

Dr. Caroline Hamm

Participating in a clinical trial is an important avenue for cancer patients to access promising new treatments. But only about seven per cent of Canadians with cancer end up enrolling in a clinical trial, and the rate is even lower in small cancer centres, which usually run fewer trials than larger hospitals. Hamm’s Clinical Trial Navigators program gives patients dedicated support to help find clinical trials they may not have otherwise known about. The program’s pilot phase focused on smaller communities, which typically have less access to clinical trials, and the program has since been expanded to help make clinical trial participation more equitable across all of Canada.

“The program is helping to close a significant gap in cancer care by facilitating the identification of meaningful clinical trial options for cancer patients and their physicians and guiding them through the processes of accessing these clinical trials.” – Dr. Caroline Hamm, Medical Oncologist at Windsor Regional Hospital and Director of Windsor Cancer Research Group


The Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Network (3CTN) is helping bring clinical trials closer to home for Canadians in remote communities.

Dr. Lacey Pitre

For people in remote communities, participating in a clinical trial often means dedicating huge amounts of time and money. But the Canadian Remote Access Framework for Clinical Trials (CRAFT) aims to close that gap in access by supporting the creation of ‘satellite sites’ for clinical trials in smaller communities, so that people across the country can take part. The program was recently piloted with Health Sciences North in Sudbury, which worked to develop a clinical trials satellite site 300 kilometres to the north in Timmins.

“Nearly 50 per cent of the patients treated with cancer therapies in the Northeastern Ontario region live too far away from our centre to access any clinical trial opportunities. With the skills and groundwork provided by the CRAFT framework, we aim to make clinical trials more accessible to all of our patients.” – Dr. Lacey Pitre, Medical Oncologist, Health Sciences North.

Researchers are conducting research more equitably

OICR’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiative is helping make cancer research more equitable within our organization and across Ontario.

Research itself faces challenges of social, ethnic and economic disparities, but researchers can make a concerted effort to overcome these inequities. OICR has launched a Commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research to ensure that principles of equity shape how we recruit investigators and research teams, how we design research projects and how we decide which research to fund. We are also providing training and supports to help researchers design studies with equity in mind.

Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi

OICR is also engaging patient partners, who bring critical perspectives on inclusiveness, to ensure we put the diverse needs of patients at the centre of our research.

“Having greater diversity in the people conducting research and the people participating in studies as well as engaging a diverse patient partners can help ensure data is representative of the entire population and bring about better cancer care for everyone.” – Dr. Laszlo Radvanyi, President and Scientific Director of OICR

Find out more about World Cancer Day and do your part to help close the care gap in cancer.

Pioneer in primary care oncology named to Order of Canada

Dr. Eva Grunfeld was honoured for her work translating evidence into practice to improve family medicine services for people with cancer.


Years of dedicated practice and groundbreaking research made OICR Clinician Scientist Dr. Eva Grunfeld a leader in family medicine.

The author of several high-impact studies, Grunfeld is widely recognized for helping improve primary care services for cancer patients, earning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine and most recently being named an officer of the Order of Canada.

But what first made Grunfeld an advocate for the role of the family doctor began long before the awards, back when she was the young child of immigrant parents living in Montreal.

Her serious injury from a motor vehicle accident thrust Grunfeld and her family into the heart of an unfamiliar health system. The maze of doctors, nurses and specialists they encountered was fragmented and confusing, not to mention the culture and language barriers they faced.

“Nobody was overseeing our care or giving advice to help us navigate the system,” Grunfeld says. “It gave me compassion for people going through that experience and motivated me to want to help them through it.”

Grunfeld took that lesson with her as she grew up to study medicine at McMaster University and earn a D.Phil in epidemiology from the University of Oxford. She then carried it through into her medical practice and her research, which — though diverse — has largely focused on improving continuity of care for cancer patients from prevention to end-of-life care through better linkage with family medicine.

Preventing cancer has been a major focus for Grunfeld, who is a Professor in the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health as well as the Department of Family & Community Medicine. For example, the BETTER Program she co-created trains primary care practitioners to better screen patients for chronic diseases and have important discussions with them around prevention.

“We as health care practitioners can do a better job communicating prevention messages to patients in a more integrated way,” Grunfeld says. “And BETTER is a program to support family doctors’ ability to deliver prevention and screening for cancer and other chronic diseases.”

When it comes to treating cancer, Grunfeld is a pioneer internationally in the area of primary care oncology. She is also a leading voice in cancer health services research, a field that focuses on using evidence to guide best practices in healthcare. Her research has tackled all sorts of questions about how to improve cancer care, from ways to better support chemotherapy patients at home to giving patients better access to genetic services.

Underlying all Grunfeld’s health services research are the complex barriers to translating research into practice. “There’s a well-recognized loss of knowledge between basic science and clinical practice,” says Grunfeld, who was also Director Knowledge Translation Research for the joint OICR-Cancer Care Ontario Health Services Research Program. “We are still working to overcome this challenge, but I think, of all disciplines, oncology is at the forefront of evidence-based practice.”

Cancer care doesn’t end after treatment, and Grunfeld is internationally recognized for her pioneering research on cancer survivorship, which focuses on people’s wellbeing from their diagnosis until the end of their lives. She has led some of the largest ever clinical trials on the topic, including studying survivorship care plans for people with cancer in the hopes of helping patients live better after their initial treatment is over.

Grunfeld says she was surprised and honoured to be among those just named to the Order of Canada. She credits the strong teams of collaborators she has worked with over the years and says she is grateful for the support from organizations like OICR, which has enabled her to balance the demands of her practice and her research.

While still working on several projects, her focus continues to be translating research into practice, including implementation of the BETTER Program.

In the future, she says her research will always be guided by the needs of the system and the needs of families.

“Times of illness are so important and difficult for people and families,” she says. “Helping them through these times is very important and, I believe, a very honourable thing to do.”

The Next Generation: Andy Zeng

MD/PhD candidate studying the diversity of blood cancer cells to find a personalized recipe for treating leukemia

Andy Zeng was always fascinated by cancer research, right back to the early days of his undergraduate studies in biology and biochemistry.

But his interest took a personal turn after he flew from Toronto to Beijing to say goodbye to his grandmother, who died of colon cancer a few years ago.

“That was when it changed from becoming an academic exercise into something that was much more personal and human for me,” Zeng recalls.

Now earning his MD/PhD from the University of Toronto, Zeng is researching the types of cells that are present in blood cancers and how they respond to different cancer drugs.

“Ultimately, the goal is to personalize patient treatment for leukemia,” he says.

Low-cost molecular test targets more efficient brain cancer diagnosis

Dr. Rola Saleeb and colleagues harnessed next-generation sequencing to create a test that can identify brain cancer biomarkers for a fraction of the cost of other platforms.

Knowing the subtle differences between cancers, observable only at a molecular level, is increasingly important to treating them.

That’s especially true for gliomas, the most common type of brain cancer. Glioma tumours that have certain genetic mutations respond very differently to one treatment versus another. In fact, glioma’s genetic makeup is so relevant to how it’s treated that guidance from the World Health Organization says it can’t properly be diagnosed without molecular testing.

But the equipment for molecular testing is expensive, and usually only large cancer centres have the money and infrastructure to run it. Samples from patients in smaller, more remote communities must be sent away for molecular testing. That means people with brain tumours can sometimes wait weeks for results before they can even put a name to their cancer — let alone start treating it.

“That time is critical for a cancer patient,” says Dr. Rola Saleeb, Director of the Immunopathology Laboratory at St. Michael’s Hospital (Unity Health) and OICR Clinician Scientist. “People shouldn’t have to wait weeks for information essential to their diagnosis and treatment.”

Saleeb and her colleague Dr. Ramzi Fattouh are working on a way to make molecular testing for cancer faster and more accessible. Collaborating with a research team that includes OICR’s Dr. Jared Simpson and Dr. Harriet Feilotter, and Unity Health Toronto neurosurgeon Dr. Sunit Das, they developed and validated a test — described in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics — that harnesses new genome sequencing technology to identify genetic variants in less than half the time and for a fraction of the cost of other options.

Their test looks specifically at variants in the IDH gene, one of the most important biomarkers for glioma. The test runs on the nanopore platform, which takes a different approach to sequencing that allows it to decode DNA in real time and can give results in a matter of hours, instead of days.

Scientists have used nanopore throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to sequence to SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is one of the first times it has been used for cancer. Beyond the speed of sequencing, the biggest advantage of nanopore is that the equipment costs about $1,000 USD and is no bigger than a mobile phone. Standard DNA sequencers can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are much larger, often requiring a special room to house and operate them.

“This type of work lowers the barrier for labs and clinics to benefit from the very rapid pace of cancer genomic discoveries,” says Dr. Simpson, an OICR-based investigator specializing in computational biology.

Simpson’s lab worked with Saleeb’s team to develop the software to analyze and interpret the sequencing data for their test.

To validate the test, Saleeb and colleagues sequenced 66 patient samples and found that it met every benchmark for clinical use.

“We proved the technology is as accurate as the other platforms,” she says. “This is proof of concept that it can be implemented in a clinical laboratory.”

Saleeb says the test is easy to reproduce, and she encourages labs to read the details of the journal article and contact her if they want advice on implementing it. She is also working with PhD student Mashiat Mimosa to expand the test to look for other genetic variants relevant to glioma. In time, they would like to create an all-in-one glioma biomarker test on the nanopore platform.

But glioma is just the starting point, and Saleeb says similar tests could be developed for other cancers. With oncology entering a “molecular era” where DNA sequencing will likely become part of how all cancer are diagnosed, she says that accessible and affordable molecular testing will become even more important.

“I want to get molecular testing in every laboratory, so that people everywhere can be empowered with the information they need to get the best possible cancer care,” Saleeb says.