Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, has been appointed Clinical Development Leader of Pfizer Oncology. Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou will be based in New York City.
Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, MD
Recognized around the world for her expertise in personalized genomics-driven cancer therapies, immunotherapies, translational research, and cancer chemoprevention, Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou comes to Pfizer from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she was Professor of Medicine in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology. While at MD Anderson, Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou led numerous clinical and translational research projects focused on the development of biomarker-based targeted therapies to overcome therapeutic resistance in advanced disease.
Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou has also recently been a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee and has served as co-principal investigator on the Master Lung Protocol study, a pioneering umbrella trial simultaneously testing multiple precision medicines in squamous cell lung cancer. This trial is supported by the National Cancer Institute and run by a partnership among patient advocacy organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and public institutions.
Professional Background
Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou received her medical degree from the University of Patras School of Medicine, interned at Metaxas Cancer Hospital in Piraeus, and completed residencies at Institut Gustave Roussy in Paris and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Most recently, she is the recipient of the 2018 Addario Lectureship Award from the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the MD Anderson Cancer Center’s 2017 Irwin H. Krakoff Award of Excellence in Clinical Research. She is the lead author or coauthor of more than 190 publications, including articles in The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. ■
