OCBN is a not-for-profit corporation that was established in 2005 with a grant from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation for the purpose of advancing biomarker research. The OCBN is designed to enable the co-ordination and amplification of the proteomic and genomic biomarker research efforts throughout the province of Ontario to better service academia and industry, whether provincially, nationally or internationally. As such, OCBN is much more than simply an academic research consortium. Residing at the core of the network is the OCBN Central Facility, located at the MaRS Incubator www.marsdd.com in the heart of the biomedical research community in Toronto, one of the most vibrant research hubs in the world. The Central Facility functions as the nexus for the network and its academic and industry partners by providing numerous support services for their clinical and basic research scientists in the conduct of their research.