Research Platforms

With the support of the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation and the BC Cancer Foundation, OVCARE has built core research resources to enhance ovarian cancer research. This has enabled advancements in ovarian cancer research not only in BC but has also enabled the establishment of collaborations with ovarian cancer researchers in Canada and worldwide.

A team approach has ensured the building of translational research platforms, accessible to all OVCARE team members regardless of institutional affiliation or medical/scientific discipline.  Platforms include a tumour bank, the Cheryl Brown Ovarian Cancer Outcomes Unit, a tissue microarray core for biomarker studies, a xenograft core for testing experimental therapeutics, and a genomics informatics core. OVCARE is developing two additional cores to improve knowledge dissemination and clinical trials capacity (SMART).

Gynaecologic Tissue Bank

  • The OVCARE Tissue Bank is housed within the Vancouver General Hospital Department of Pathology and the British Columbia Cancer Agency. This bank contains tumour samples from over 2100 patients...  read more >

Ovarian Cancer Tissue Microarrays

  • The ovarian cancer tissue microarray facility holds samples from a number of ovarian cancer case series, including the samples from all available moderate/high risk ("early") ovarian cancer cases...  read more >

The Cheryl Brown Ovarian Cancer Outcomes Unit

  • Named in recognition of the late Cheryl Brown, a tireless advocate for ovarian cancer patients, this unit is located at the British Columbia Cancer Agency and is led by Dr. Anna Tinker...  read more >

Bioinformatics

  • The OVCARE Bioinformatics core facility is located at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver and headed by Dr. Sohrab Shah...  read more >

The Gray Family Ovarian Clear Cell Carcinoma Research Resource

  • The Gray Family Ovarian Clear Cell Carcinoma Research Resource is maintained through the collaborative effort of OVCARE and the British Columbia Cancer Agency...  read more >

Culture Bank Core Facility

  • This tissue culture/cell biology facility is located at the Robert Ho Building. This facility was established by Dr. Nelly Auersperg, the world leader in the culture of ovarian surface epithelium...  read more >

Patient-derived Ovarian Cancer Xenografts

  • This OVCARE core facility is run by Dr. YZ Wang at the the Living Tumor Laboratory. The Wang group has developed a routine procedure for successfully grafting and serially transplanting primary human cancer tissues into immuno-deficient SCID mice...  read more >

Shared Access Medicine:  an Approach to Rare Tumours (SMART)

  • SMART is a program of the OVCARE consortium designed to advance the treatment of patients with the less common forms of cancer...  read more >
 

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