Clinical trials are expensive, time consuming, and labor-intensive. And in the traditional sense, study designs are inflexible.
Adaptive study designs allow for flexibility during a clinical trial. Options can be built into a study to use data collected that has accumulated at interim time points to:
Adjust sample sizes in treatment arms or reduce patient recruitment.
Drop treatment arms entirely (treatment pruning)
Adjust randomization schema
Combine Phase II and Phase III (adaptive seamless design)
Early stopping of a study for futility or success.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies require the minimization of bias in study design and analysis. In order to minimize bias, particular steps and safeguards, using regulatory guidance and sound statistical principles, must be put into place to assure validity of an clinical.
Therefore a number of considerations must be made in the design of an adaptive trial to enhance flexibility while minimizing bias, and ensuring statistically valid and well-informed decisions. Problems can arise in an adaptive design due to selection bias, interim analysis “look-sies”, and when merging dose selection and confirmation phases into one trial.
The benefits of a clinical trial with an adaptive design include savings in both time and dollars, to the desired end of bringing useful drug treatments and devices to patients more quickly.
The role of statistics in clinical trials incorporates the tools used to develop a robust study, minimize bias, and assess efficacy of new treatments as relates to comparison to competing therapies. The objective of the seminar is to provide information that can be used immediately by personnel involved in the design and analysis of clinical trials. The presentation involves use of statistical techniques and a basic understanding of statistical theory and the framework of randomized controlled trials is desired. However, presentation of statistical theory and application will be limited to only what is needed by the attendees to understand and implement adaptive trial design and analysis.
Areas Covered in the Seminar:
Overview of Applications for Adaptive Design in Clinical Trials
Statistical Techniques of Adaptive Design
Practical Considerations for implementation of an Adaptive Design
Sample Size Re-Estimation (SSR)
Regulatory Aspects of an Adaptive Design
When an Adaptive Design is, and is not, Appropriate
Examples of Clinical Trials that Incorporated Adaptive Design
Computer Code in R Statistical Software for Simulation Studies
Who Should Attend:
Trial Sponsors
Principal Investigators
Clinical Investigators
Clinical Research Statisticians
Clinical Research Coordinators
Clinical Research Nurse Coordinators
Clinical Research Associates/Assistants
Clinical Project Managers/Leaders
Study Managers
Regulatory Professionals/Coordinators
Medical Writers who need to interpret statistical reports