Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Genetic tests are used to identify patients who have inherited diseases. For patients who are diagnosed with cancer, genetic testing can be used to see if they have an inherited genetic mutation that caused their cancer. Patients with inherited cancer mutations have a hereditary cancer syndrome and have a high risk to develop more cancers over their lifetime. Once they are found to have a hereditary cancer syndrome from genetic testing, doctors will place patients in advanced cancer screening programs and refer to them to specialists to help reduce their risk to develop cancer or detect it earlier. Although genetic testing for cancer patients has advanced in recent years, it is still only able to look at a few genes at a time. Because of this, most patients who have testing to determine if they have a hereditary cancer syndrome receive a negative result, meaning that no genetic mutation was found. These patients are not eligible for advanced screening programs and do not benefit from genetic testing. However, a new genetic test called genomic sequencing may help to change this. Unlike other genetic tests, genomic sequencing can analyze all of the genes in the human body . Therefore, it is more likely than current genetic tests to find a mutation in patients who have a hereditary cancer syndrome. This means that more patients will become eligible for cancer screening and other procedures to reduce their risk. However, genomic sequencing is a new test, and so information on its benefits for patients is limited. This study will aim to evaluate the benefits of genomic sequencing for cancer patients by determining the number of patients who are found to have a cancer mutation and the number of patients who have changes in their cancer screening and management. Our study will give important information to doctors who may wish to use this test if it is shown to improve patient care.