The BC Cancer Personalized OncoGenomics (POG) Program, co-led by Dr. Marco Marra, Director of Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at BC Cancer and BC Cancer Medical Oncologist Dr. Janessa Laskin, is a patient-centric research initiative, consisting of oncologists, pathologists and other clinical, research, and technical personnel, studying the impact of embedding whole genome and transcriptome analysis into the clinical care of B.C. patients with advanced cancers.

POG is a world-leading research program that is using intensive genomic data collection and analysis to identify and better understand the genomic alterations that drive cancer growth, metastasis, and the biological evolution and response to therapies. Integration of genomic, transcriptomic, clinical, and treatment data provides a rich dataset for the interrogation and understanding of correlates of treatment response and resistance.

Analysis of the data from the first 570 patients, published in the April 2020 issue of Nature Cancer and featured on its cover, has demonstrated the impacts of therapy on cancer genomes and the potential for precision oncology to provide more effective therapeutic options for advanced cancer patients.

POG


For Patients & Public

Information and educational resources curated for patients and members of the public interested in learning more about POG.

Learn more.

For Medical Professionals

Information, educational resources, upcoming seminars and access to POG reports for medical professionals.

Learn more.

For Scientists

Information, educational resources, upcoming seminars and access to POG data for researchers.

Learn more.

POG Eligibility and Enrollment

There are specific criteria for enrolment of patients in POG.

Who is eligible for POG?

This is a highly experimental research program for cancer patients being treated and consistently followed at BC Cancer. There are many specific inclusion criteria but the main ones to consider are:

  • Patients with incurable, metastatic disease;
  • Patients with limited or no prior chemotherapy;
  • Fit and functionally well;
  • Cancer that can be easily biopsied;
  • Permanent B.C. residents receiving care and follow up in B.C.;
  • Other disease/type specific criteria may also apply to individual cases.

How do patients get enrolled in POG?

For more information on POG and eligibility, BC patients should speak to their medical oncologist at their next scheduled visit. There are many other provinces with cancer genomic studies, patients should discuss their interest in clinical trials with their medical oncologist to explore their local options.


Further questions regarding POG can be directed to: POGinfo@bcgsc.ca

Peer-reviewed publications

Findings from the POG program are influencing precision oncology approaches around the world.

Each peer-reviewed POG publication has been a collaborative effort between bioinformaticians, scientists, technicians, engineers, medical geneticists, oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, nurses, genetic counsellors, trainees, coordinators and more.


Select POG Publications

Pleasance E, Bohm A, Williamson LM et al. Whole genome and transcriptome analysis enhances precision cancer treatment options. Annals of Oncology. 2022.

Read our News Story about this publication.


Pleasance E, Titmuss E, Williamson L et al. Pan-cancer analysis of advanced patient tumors reveals interactions between therapy and genomic landscapes. Nature Cancer. 2020.

Read our News Story about this publication.


Majounie E, Wee K, Williamson LM et al. Fluorouracil sensitivity in a head and neck squamous cell carcinoma with a somatic DPYD structural variant. Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Case Studies. 2019.

Read our News Story about this publication.


See a full list of POG publications here.

POG in the Press

The POG project has made headlines in the mainstream media.

POG News

Up to date information about the POG project.

Get the latest news about the project, here.

The POG Team

The POG team includes more than 200 oncologists, pathologist, radiologists, scientists, technicians and coordinators.
Medical Oncology

Abdul Al-Tourah

Helen Anderson

Vanessa Bernstein

Sylvie Bourque

Barbara Campling

Angela Chan

Theresa Chan

Sylvia Cheng

Kim Chi

Stephen Chia

Janine Davies

Rebecca Deyell

David Dix

Thuan Do

Bernhard Eigl

Susan Ellard

Xiaolan Feng

David Fenton

Daygen Finch

Paul Galbraith

Karen Gelmon

Alina Gerrie

Sharlene Gill

Karmjit Gill

Anagha Gurjal

Edward Hardy

Jason Hart

Cheryl Ho

Paul Hoskins

Michael Humphreys

Bal Johal

Kong Khoo

Jenny Ko

Christian Kollmannsberger

Doran Ksienski

Janessa Laskin

Lyly Le

Christopher Lee

Ursula Lee

Howard Lim

Caroline Lohrisch

Jonathan Loree

Nicol Macpherson

Barb Melosky

John Paul McGhie

Corey Metcalf

Deepu Mirchandani

Sujaatha Narayanan

Thao Nguyen

Conrad Oja

Gary Pansegrau

Maryse Power

Bradley Proctor

Sanjay Rao

Rod Rassekh

Jennifer Rauw

Daniel Renouf

Paul Rogers

David Sanford

Delia Sauciuc

Kerry Savage

Ravinder Sawhney

Asif Shaikh

Wen Wen Shan

Tamara Shenkier

Christine Simmons

Kevin Song

Caron Strahlendorf

Sophie Sun

Isabella Tai

Ann Tan

Sara Taylor

Brian Thiessen

Anna Tinker

Dorothy Uhlman

Joanna Vergidis

Diego Villa

Deepa Wadhwa

Tamana Walia

HuiLi Wong

Muhammad Zulfigar

Bioinformatics

Jianghong An

Dustin Bleile

Melika Bonakdar

Reanne Bowlby

Marc Calingo

Marcus Carreira

Simon Chan

Dean Cheng

Young Cheng

Caleb Choo

Eric Chuah

Richard Corbett

Veronika Csizmok

Anna Davies

Athena Deng

Matthew Douglas

Jasleen Grewal

Cameron Grisdale

An He

Steven Jones

Eleanor Lewis

Correy Lim

Daniel Macmillan

Alireza Heravi Moussavi

Karen Mungall

Kieran O'Neill

Diana Palmquist

Johnson Pang

Brayden Pellegrini

Erin Pleasance

Patrick Plettner

Cara Reisle

Sara Sadeghi

Yaoqing Shen

Greg Taylor

Emma Titmuss

Victoria Trinh

Kane Tse

Kathleen Wee

Laura Williamson

Tina Wong

Wei Zhang

Genome Science

Robin Coope

Peter Eirew

Bruno Grande

Martin Hirst

Rob Holt

Aly Karsan

Sreeja Leelakumari

Marco Marra

Helen McDonald

Michelle Moksa

Richard Moore

Gregg Morin

Ryan Morin

Andy Mungall

Brad Nelson

Pawan Pandoh

Kevin Sauve

Natasja Wye

Amir Zadeh

Yongjun Zhao

Pathology

Andy Churg

Christopher Dunham

Anna Lee

Pedro Farinha

Lien Hoang

Diana Ionescu

Cheng-Han Lee

Nissreen Mohammad

Tony Ng

Torsten Nielsen

David Schaeffer

Brian Skinnider

Graham Slack

Basile Tessier-Cloutier

Suzanne Vercauteren

Stephen Yip

Chen Zhou


Project Management/Coordination

Cecilia Crosby

Darko Curman

Veronica Dabrowski

Balvir Deol

Nancy Ferguson

Ana Fisic

Colleen Fitzgerald

Cathy Fitzpatrick

Alexandra Fok

Colleen Jantzen

Jas Kandola

Julie Lorette

Jessica Nelson

Robyn Roscoe

June Song

Lindsay Zibrik


Scientific Advisory Committee

Lillian Siu

Elaine Mardis

Trevor Pugh

Soheil Meshinchi

Michael Berger

Ulrik Lassen

Sean Grimmond


Medical Genetics
 

Linlea Armstrong

 

Ian Bosdet

Gillian Mitchell

Sean Young

Intan Schrader


Radiology

Fergus Cafferty

David Ferguson

Colin Mar

Montgomery Martin

Ren Yuan


Clinical Genomics

Lucas Swanson

Jillian Slind

Liz Starks

Lateef Yang

Jelena Sihvonen


Social Science

Samantha Pollard

Dean Regier

Deirdre Weymann


Clinical Ethics

Alice Virani


Pharmacy

Shirin Abadi

Former POG Team Members

    

Pathology

Yazeed Alwalaie

Daiana Becker-Santos

Kathy Ceballos

Bakul Dalal

John English

Patrice Eydoux

Anthony Karnezis

Helga Klein-Parker

Lawrence Lee

Hector Li Chang

Malcolm Hayes

Tadaaki Hiruki

Hugo Horlings

David Huntsman

Nikita Makretsov

Greg Naus

Tomo Osako

Amir Rahemtulla

Brandon Sheffield

Sona Sihra

Peyman Tavassoli

Tom Thomson

Tracy Tucker

Emilija Todorovic

Dirk van Niekerk

Carlos Vilamil

Joanne Wright

Bioinformatics

Pinaki Bose

Morgan Bye

Carolyn Ch'ng

Martin Jones

Katayoon Kasaian

Ji-Young Kim

Jake Lever

Yvonne Li

William Long

Yussanne Ma

Elisa Majounie

Brandon Pierce

Nina Thiessen

Eric Zhao

Kelsey Zhu

Genome Science

Sam Aparicio

Scott Brown

Christopher Hughes

Heather Kirk

Cydney Nielsen

Julie Nielsen

Jacquie Schein

Colin Schlosser

Sohrab Shah

Project Management/Coordination

Leslie Alfaro

Charlene Appleby

Christiana Carstairs

Candace Carter

Katherine Mui

Payal Sipahimalani

Isabel Trapaga Avancena

Peggy Tsang


Medical Oncology

Winson Cheung

Joseph Connors

Donna Hogge

Hagen Kennecke

Meg Knowling

Nevin Murray


Social Science

Anita Charters

Peter Chow-White

Dung Ha


Radiology

Francois Benard

John Myo

Funders & Partners

The Personalized OncoGenomics (POG) Program would not be possible without the support of our funders and collaborating partners.

POG is pleased to announce that it is a member of the International Cancer Genome Consortium — Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ICGC-ARGO).

We gratefully acknowledge all funders and supporting partners of the BC Cancer Genome Sciences Center and the development of the Personalized OncoGenomics Program.

FUNDERS

This work would not be possible without the generous support of the following organizations: BC Cancer FoundationGenome British Columbia,Terry Fox Research Institute Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres NetworkGenome CanadaCanada Foundation for InnovationBC Knowledge Development Fund (Government of British Columbia), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Program (National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)), The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project (National Institutes of Health (NIH)), and The University of British Columbia (UBC).

 

PARTNERS

Thank you to the following organizations who support our work: Centre for Clinical Genomics (CCG)International Cancer Genome Consortium — Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ICGC-ARGO)BC Cancer Hereditary Cancer Program (HCP)Enhanced Pancreatic Cancer Profiling for Individualized Care (EPPIC) (Terry Fox Translational Research Program), Prospectively Defining Metastatic Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Subtypes by Comprehensive Genomic Analysis (PanGen) (BC Cancer, Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI), Pancreas Centre BC), PRecision Oncology For Young peopLE (PROFYLE) (Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI)), Terry Fox Designated Canadian Comprehensive Cancer Centres Network (TF4CN) (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI), BC Cancer), Canadian Distributed Infrastructure for Genomics (CanDIG)Treehouse Childhood Cancer InitiativeGilead Sciences, Vancouver General Hospital Pathology Biobank, St. Paul's Hospital Pathology Biobank, Personalized Approaches in the Treatment of Head and Neck Cancer (PATH).


Associated Programs

The POG program interfaces with various clinical programs and trails. Learn more about these programs here:

PanGen

Terry Fox PROFYLE

BC Cancer Hereditary Cancer Program

CanDIG

ICGC ARGO

Contact Us

For more information: POGinfo@bcgsc.ca

Back to top