NIH Initiates ALCHEMIST Trials: Targeted Treatment in Early-Stage Lung Cancer

The Adjuvant Lung Cancer Enrichment Marker Identification and Sequencing Trials, or ALCHEMIST, was launched today to identify early-stage lung cancer patients with tumors that harbor certain uncommon genetic changes and evaluate whether drug treatments targeted against those changes can lead to improved survival.

“We believe that the findings from ALCHEMIST will not only help answer an important question about the addition of targeted therapies in earlier stage disease but will also help us in understanding the prevalence and natural history of these genomic changes in earlier stage lung cancer. We also hope to gain a better understanding as well regarding the genetic changes in the tumor at the time of recurrence,” said Shakun Malik, M.D., head of Thoracic Cancer Therapeutics in the Clinical Investigations Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). “The findings will help to define clinical, biologic and molecular behaviors of this type of lung cancer.”

ALCHEMIST is supported by the NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, with coordination of the component trials by the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group. All of the NCI-supported National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) groups collaborated in the development of ALCHEMIST and are participating in the component trials.

Read the NIH announcement here: http://1.usa.gov/1pFqpAT

Source: National Institutes of Health