Helena Yu, MD

Lung cancer with genetic changes in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein occurs in up to 20% of all lung cancers. Osimertinib is a targeted therapy tailored for these cancers. The treatment is initially effective, but lung cancer eventually adapts and regrows. No subsequent oral targeted therapies are available. Some patients have excellent responses to osimertinib but have a few areas where the cancer has remains. We found that radiation therapy can treat these lesions, extending disease control with osimertinib. However, there are no guidelines for selecting patients for radiation therapy, a treatment that has potentially serious side effects. With our unique access to patients and samples, we will use advanced imaging techniques and circulating tumor DNA in the blood to develop a model that accurately predicts response to osimertinib in order to select patients for radiation therapy either at maximum tumor shrinkage or at the time of tumor growth on osimertinib. 

The Keith R. Ayres Lung Cancer Discovery Award 

Update: We have created our initial version of our AI-supported model predicting response to systemic therapy (targeted therapy and immunotherapy) and radiation in locally advanced and metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. We are working on the manuscript of our initial model while also simultaneously working on model refinement adding additional ctDNA data and assessing accuracy among additional treatments. We will also be validating the model in additional external datasets.