AURA3 trial: does Tagrisso (osimertinib) have the potential to become the new standard of care for second-line treatment of patients with EGFR T790M mutation-positive locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC.

Vassiliki A Papadimitrakopoulou speaks to Roshaine Wijayatunga, Managing Commissioning Editor: Dr Papadimitrakopoulou is the Jay and Lori Eisenberg Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chief of the section of Thoracic Medical Oncology in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas/MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her areas of expertise include design and development of novel therapeutic clinical trials for lung and head and neck neoplasms, personalized genomics-driven lung cancer therapy and translational research and cancer chemoprevention. Her extensive experience in design, development and implementation of translational research in the context of multidisciplinary research teams has led to research funding from National Cancer Institute (NCI), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and Department of Defense (DOD) both independently and as a member of a research team in the Head and Neck SPORE program. Currently, she serves as the principal investigator and leads numerous clinical and translational research projects with a focus on the development of biomarker-based targeted therapy to overcome therapeutic resistance in advanced disease and immunotherapy. Most notably, she has led the multidisciplinary clinical and translational research infrastructure dedicated to the treatment of metastatic refractory NSCLC as part of the BATTLE-2 program, designed and developed the first-in-the-world comprehensive genomics-driven umbrella approach in Squamous Lung Cancer, the Lung Master protocol, jointly sponsored by NCI-Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) and Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH)/industry, aiming at bringing personalized medicine to patients with this disease. She is the Co-PI of an R01 award focusing on the role of KRAS mutations and targeting in lung cancer. She is the lead author or coauthor of over 150 published articles, book chapters and reviews, and numerous abstracts involving cancer therapeutics, prevention and translational research and she has received several awards including the ASCO Young Investigator and Career Development Award. On this R01 application, she will serve as Co-PI, working closely with Roy Herbst (Yale Cancer Center) and Don Gibbons (UT/MD Anderson Cancer Center), building on the recently completed BATTLE-2 program, and capitalizing on both laboratory findings supporting MEK targeted therapy and clinical effectiveness of immunotherapy and their combinations in addressing KRAS mutated lung cancer.