About Ontario Cancer Institute

Ontario Cancer Institute is one of three research institutes comprising the University Health Network. It is located at Princess Margaret Hospital. The Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI), Canada's first dedicated cancer hospital, opened officially and began to receive patients in 1958, although its research divisions had begun work a year earlier. Because, at that time, a stigma was associated with the word 'cancer', the hospital was soon renamed the Princess Margaret Hospital, although the whole operation was called the Ontario Cancer Institute incorporating the Princess Margaret Hospital, or OCI/PMH. Clinicians usually preferred the hospital name, while the scientists used OCI.

Cancer research is the priority at the Ontario Cancer Institute, one of three research institutes comprising the University Health Network. Researchers here employ state-of-the-art tools in genomics, proteomics, structural biology, molecular biology, biophysics and the behavioural sciences.