NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Biocept said today that it has begun a clinical research collaboration with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center focused on non-small cell lung cancer.
The company will work with a team led by UT Southwestern researcher Saad Khan to evaluate its Target Selector platform for rapid detection of ALK mutations in patients with NSCLC. Tests will be performed both at baseline and longitudinally to measure treatment response and early signs of resistance.
A second arm of the study will also evaluate patients with rare cancers such as anaplastic thyroid cancer to determine if ALK rearrangements in these patients can be identified in the blood and whether they predict patient response to targeted therapy.
"We have designed this study to demonstrate the ability to rapidly identify ALK rearrangements, and to provide further evidence that patients with both non-small cell lung cancer and rare cancers harboring ALK alterations can benefit from targeted therapy and serial monitoring of ALK and other key alterations," Khan said in a statement.
Other terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.