Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network (MOHCCN)

Supported by the Canadian Federal Ministry of Health, the Terry Fox Research Institute’s Marathon of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Network (MOHCCN) serves as a platform for data-sharing across Canada that includes comprehensive clinical data, whole genome and transcriptome sequencing, as well as immunophenotyping by immunohistochemistry for 15,000 cancer cases in the first five years and 100,000 cases within the decade. The Princess Margaret Cancer Consortium (PM2C), led by Dr. Lillian Siu, is one of the founding Network members and serves as a regional hub that is setting the standards for future network members.

OCTANE was nominated as one of the seven initial PM cohorts to be included in the MOHCCN initiative because of the wide selection of patients with biospecimens available in the OCTANE biorepository. In year 1, 56 OCTANE cases were selected with a focus on patients who had previously been treated with immunotherapy agents or who had previous whole genome and transcriptome sequencing performed on their archival tumor samples. This collaboration was highly successful; as such, MOHCCN extended the partnership in year 2 and provided an additional 50 slots to OCTANE.

LIBERATE cohorts are also ideal candidates for MOHCCN inclusion, given their abundance of banked biospecimens, provisions for data and sample sharing, and diverse cancer patient populations and research themes. LIBERATE will be a major contributing study for MOHCCN in the upcoming year, as five cohorts were selected for MOHCCN year 2. This includes over 300 proposed cases from the CHARM, GOLDEN, IRIS, READILY, and SAMBA cohorts. The focus of these studies on key themes in precision medicine, such as resistance to immunotherapy, molecular residual disease as a predictive biomarker, and rare cancers, aids in the alignment of cases to all the elements of MOHCCN’s goals.

Every year, MOHCCN will on-board new cases based on scientific questions set forth by the MOHCCN Scientific Questions Working Group, co-chaired by Dr. Lillian Siu. Due to the heavy correlative-sampling nature of CGP studies, the CGP expects to continue contributing strongly to MOHCCN in the years to come.