The Ontario-wide Cancer TArgeted Nucleic acid Evaluation (OCTANE) study is a new Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR)-supported initiative that provides next generation sequencing (NGS)-based molecular profiling at multiple Ontario cancer centres, including the Juravinski Cancer Centre, London Health Sciences Centres, The Ottawa Hospital, Kingston General Hospital and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

OCTANE’s infrastructure will allow Ontario clinical labs to expand their capacity for clinical molecular testing that will directly benefit patients in Ontario. Patients with advanced solid tumours can have archival tumour tissue genetically tested on NGS technology. Results from this testing will inform the use of approved therapies (if appropriate), facilitate targeted therapy and immune therapy clinical trials in Ontario and identify patient subsets for additional research studies. All participating patients will be asked to provide additional archival tumour, blood samples and permission for data sharing with other cancer researchers to establish a province-wide repository of tumour tissue and blood samples for future research, as well as a large database of genomically-characterized and clinically-annotated sequencing results. This will accelerate the development novel genomic tests for clinical use.