The Ontario Tumour Bank (OTB) is celebrating a milestone. It's now banked samples from more than 10,000 donors and Kingston General Hospital is a big part of that success.
Since the program began at our hospital in 2005, over 1,700 donors from Kingston and across the region have provided over 2,000 samples to it.
“This tumour bank is extremely important for research purposes,” says Dr. Jay Engel, the principal investigator at KGH. “More and more, the molecular makeup of a tumour is determining how we treat it and the tumour bank is providing high quality fresh samples that can be extensively analyzed.”
The OTB is a collaboration between the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, KGH and three other academic teaching hospitals in Ontario. At each hospital dedicated tumour bank staff collect samples and clinical data from consenting donors.
Here at KGH, once a patient agrees to take part in the program, a portion of their tumour is processed by the pathology department and then put in the cryogenic freezer. Blood is also collected from the patients along with their medical details which are entered anonymously into a databank.
“The interesting thing about the Ontario Tumour Bank is not only are they getting very high quality specimens, but they are also getting a detailed medical history about the patient's tumour and risk factors, treatments to date and the follow up,” says Engel. “This enables researchers to look closely at a very select group of patients with a certain type of tumour for example.”
According to the OTB, the tumour samples are also helping cancer researchers map the genomic changes present in many forms of cancer. This will help build the next generation of diagnostic tools and treatments for our cancer patients.
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