About Us

OCTANE's mission is to expand the capacity of next-generation sequencing (NGS) testing for advanced solid tumor patients across Ontario while creating a repository (storage) of blood and tumor samples from patients which can be used for future research.

Patients help advance research by providing us access to their relevant clinical data and biological samples. The OCTANE team analyzes and de-identifies the data (i.e. removes identifiers like name, address, phone number) before sharing it through scientific data-sharing projects to help improve our understanding of cancer.

In 2016, the Cancer Genomics Program (CGP) launched the Ontario-wide Targeted Nucleic Acid Evaluation (OCTANE) study, an initiative that is jointly supported by Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation (PMCF) and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). Thanks to the financial support from PMCF and OICR, CGP was able to establish the core infrastructure for OCTANE including a central study management team, a central biobank at OICR for storing samples to be used in future research, and a Steering Committee that includes clinical and laboratory scientists from all participating institutions across Ontario.

Stage 1 of the OCTANE (OCTANE 1.0) study had been activated at 7 sites in Ontario: Princess Margaret (PM), London Health Sciences Centres (LHSC), Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC), The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), Juravinski Cancer Centre (JCC), Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (SHSC), and Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH).

To better predict whether treatments will be helpful (treatment resistance) and find patients who are at high risk of having their cancer return (relapse), the study team developed OCTANE 2.0, the second stage of the project.