Response Genetics Inc. announced that it has been awarded a multi-million dollar research subcontract to support the Adjuvant Lung Cancer Enrichment Marker Identification and Sequencing Trials (ALCHEMIST). ALCHEMIST consists of 3 integrated precision medicine trials that are being implemented through the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) - a screening trial and two associated treatment trials. The research subcontract was awarded by Leidos Biomedical Research Inc., the operations and technical support contractor for the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, which is sponsored by NCI.

ALCHEMIST will involve screening thousands of patients with resected early-stage lung cancer over a 5 to 6 year period in order to identify those patients with two specific gene changes: EGFR gene mutations and ALK gene rearrangement. Other goals of ALCHEMIST include defining biologic and molecular progression of early-stage lung cancer, evaluating two promising therapies in the adjuvant setting, and providing a public resource in which the genomic characterization of patients' tumors is tied to detailed clinical annotation, epidemiology data, and long-term outcome data.