BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH PRODID:-//Telerik Inc.//Sitefinity CMS 15.4//EN BEGIN:VEVENT DESCRIPTION:To \;view \;the slides from this meeting please click h ere. \nLondon Area Symposium: Statistical Innovations in Clinical Trials a t Amgen (Uxbridge) in collaboration with Cytel\nSpeakers are Peter Colman (UCB) Cyrus Mehta (Cytel)\, \;James Wason \;(MRC Biostatistics Uni t\, Cambridge)\, Kevin Carroll (kjcstatistics) 9am Arrival and Coffee 9:3 0am &ndash\; 11am : Statistical and Operational Challenges of VALOR\, an A daptive Phase-3 Trial for Acute Myeloid Leukemia. \; Cyrus Mehta\, Cyt el Inc. The recently completed VALOR trial comparing vosaroxin to cytarabi ne in acute myeloid leukemia (ASH 2014) accrued 711 patients\, and compris es the largest body of evidence for AML from a randomized phase 3 clinical trial. This adaptive event driven trial was designed with an interim anal ysis that allowed for early efficacy stopping\, early futility stopping\, unblinded sample size re-estimation\, or continuation as planned. The samp le size re-estimation option was implemented. We will present top-line res ults from the trial and discuss the operational\, regulatory and statistic al challenges that were faced along the way. To our knowledge this is the first phase 3 confirmatory oncology trial in which unblinded sample size r e-estimation was implemented. Cyrus Mehta is President and co-founder of C ytel Corporation and Adjunct Professor of \; Biostatistics\, Harvard U niversity. Cytel is a leading provider of software and services for the de sign\, interim monitoring and implementation of adaptive clinical trials. Dr. Mehta consults extensively with the biopharmaceutical industry on grou p sequential and adaptive design\, offers workshops on these topics\, and serves on data monitoring and steering committees for trials in many thera peutic areas including oncology\, cardiology\, neurology and metabolic dis ease. He has led the development of \; the StatXact\, LogXact and East software packages that are widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry and at academic research centers. He publishes his methodological research in leading statistics journals and is a past co-winner of \; the Geor ge W. Snedecor Award from the American Statistical Association. He is a Fe llow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He was named Mosteller Statistician o f the Year by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Statistical Associ ation in 2000\, and Outstanding Zoroastrian Entrepreneur by the World Zoro astrian Chamber of Commerce in 2002. 11am-11:15am &ndash\; Coffee break 11 :15am &ndash\; 12:45am: Innovative Considerations on a Phase 2a Dose-Findi ng Strategy Using Bayesian Methods and MCP-Mod. \; James Wason (MRC Bi ostatistics Unit\, Cambridge\, UK)\, Julian Zhou (Roche Products\, Shangha i\, China) Early phase clinical trials in patients who are currently on tr eatments may be difficult to recruit for. Owing to this limited availabili ty of patients they often require the use of smaller numbers of patients a nd more innovative statistical methods. \; Often single agents\, devel oped for the same disease of interest are not sufficient and may need be u sed in combination to be effective. \; Appropriate decsisions may also have to be made for doses\, treatment duration and combinations with othe r compounds. The plan for the twelve-week phase 2a study in one such popul ation will involve an early futility look at week 2 based on a biomarker\, using Bayesian posterior probabilities. \; This will be followed by u sing \; MCP-Mod at the end of study on a clinical response\, in order to investigate the dose response. \; At week 2\, a biomarker is measu red to see if there is a clinically meaningful effect at the \; target for appropriated doses. If not then new doses may need to be added. \ ; The posterior probability of the meaningful effect will be used in the d ecision criteria. At the end of the study MCP-Mod will be used in order to investiagate the dose response. \; MCP-Mod involves pre-specifying ca ndidate dose-reponse models followed by statistical testing for dose-respo nse signal whilst controlling the type I error. \; The best fitting mo del is then selected\, and the target dose estimated\, which is then recom mended \; for phase 2b and phase 3 studies. The method has been qualif ied by the EMA as an efficient method of dose finding. \; \; Simu lations have been conducted to investigate the futility and dose finding d ecisions in phase 2a and understand the operating characteristics\, and co mparisons made to a traditional dose finding paradigm\, which might involv e fewer doses compared to a control using pairwise comparisons. Dr James W ason \;is a senior investigator statistician at the MRC Biostatistics unit (BSU) in Cambridge. He has been there since doing his Ph.D. in 2006. Since 2009 he has worked in the BSU&rsquo\;s Hub for Trials Methodology Re search\, directed by Adrian Mander. His main research interests are adapti ve designs for clinical trials\, efficient analysis of composite endpoints \, and the use of biomarkers in clinical trials. He is also the co-lead of the MRC Hub for Trials Methodology&rsquo\;s stratified medicine working g roup.\n12:45 noon- 1:45pm &ndash\; Lunch 1:45pm &ndash\; 3:15pm: Defining\ , Understanding and Communicating Decision Criteria in Early Clinical Deve lopment. \; Peter Colman (UCB) It is not uncommon to investigate multi ple indicators of potential clinical efficacy in an early study in patient s. A broad swathe of biomarkers may be nominated to ensure that evidence o f activity on the projected biochemical pathway is acquired and additional biomarkers may indicate the precursors of clinical benefit. Registration endpoints\, surrogates thereof or less-qualified biomarkers of efficacy ma y also be captured. The number of endpoints may easily exceed the number o f subjects in the study and so it is vital that the properties of any deci sions are well understood and consistently communicated. We discuss one ap proach which elicits views on the combinations of results that would be co nsidered positive or encouraging and seeks to assess the likely false-posi tive rates associated with the consequent decision criteria. \; We ill ustrate the ideas with some real examples. Peter spent the first 29 years of his statistical career with Pfizer at their UK research site in Sandwic h. During this time he worked in Animal Health\, Clinical Pharmacology and Early Clinical Development. He also experienced a phase III project for 6 months. For several years\, he led a group of statisticians focussing on PK-PD Modelling &\; Simulation\, Genetics\, Clinical Technology and Out comes Research. He returned to mainstream\, hands-on project work and also contributed to a number of European collaborations (e.g. IMI SAFE-T). In 2011\, upon closure of the Sandwich site\, Peter moved to AZ at Alderley P ark\, where he worked on safety data and as a manager of statisticians in the oncology and anti-infectives area. He joined the UCB early development statistics team at UCB in 2013 where he contributes to the design of stud ies in the immunology and neuroscience areas. In his spare time he plays c lassical double bass and he is currently the chair of Maidstone Orchestral Society. 3:15pm &ndash\; 3:30pm &ndash\; Coffee Break 3:30pm &ndash\; 5pm : Tackling Real Problems in Multi Regional Clinical Trials. \; Kevin C arroll (KJCStatistics) MRCTs are an increasingly necessary feature of mode rn drug development. \; In areas like diabetes and cardiovascular diso rders\, or early adjuvant oncologic disease settings\, or where there is a regulatory requirement to rule out small\, but important safety issues su ch as in the ongoing cluster of trials investigating long acting beta agon ists in the treatment of asthma\,  \;the demand for very large trials drives the need for MRCTs. \; \; Such trials are needed to provide the power to address the underlying hypothesis of interest\, but can only do so under the assumption of no true regional heterogeneity. \;This talk will address the implications of true regional differences in MRCTs a nd will illustrate the real statistical and regulatory challenges faced by reference to recent case studies\, including the 18\,000 patient &lsquo\; PLATO&rsquo\; trial in acute coronary syndromes. \; \; Kevin Josep h Carroll\, PhD\, CStat\, CSci\, Honorary Senior Lecturer Medical Statisti cs is an Independent Statistical Consultant and owner of KJCStatistics Ltd . \; Kevin has 26 years drug development of experience across all tria l phases and multiple therapeutic areas including Oncology\, CV\, Metaboli sm\, Respiratory\, CNS and GI. \; Most recently Kevin held the positio ns of VP Statistics and Chief Statistician at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals and Expert Statistician with Boehringer-Ingelheim. \; Kevin has extens ive experience in the design\, conduct\, analysis and reporting of clinica l trials. \;  \; \;As a Consultant\, Kevin has gained experien ce in helping both small and large pharma and biotech companies tackle sta tistical issues in development\, including the application of innovative s tatistical approaches to trial design and analysis and regulatory product license applications. \; This includes the use of Bayesian decision-ba sed designs to expedite effective decision making\, and the use of complex staged designs in pivotal Phase II/III and Phase III trials to expedite o verall development times. Kevin retains a strong technical interest in are as such as parametric survival modelling\, group sequential analysis\, ada ptive designs and large outcomes trial design\, and a growing interest in the statistical issues associated with health economic analyses and networ k meta-analyses. Registration: £\;50 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20150630 DTSTAMP:20260913T050540Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20150629 LOCATION: SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Statistical Innovations in Clinical Trials UID:RFCALITEM639248727400536569 X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:To \;view \;the slides from th is meeting please click here.

\nLondon Area Sympo sium: Statistical Innovations in Clinical Trials at Amgen (Uxbridge) in co llaboration with Cytel
\nSpeakers are Peter Colman (UCB) Cyrus Mehta (Cytel)\, \;James Wason \;(MRC Biostatistics Unit\, Cambridge)\, K evin Carroll (kjcstatistics)

9am Arrival and Coffee

9:30am &ndash\; 11am : Statistical and Operational Challenges of VALOR\, an Adaptive Phase-3 Trial for Acute Myel oid Leukemia. \; Cyrus Mehta\, Cytel Inc.

The recently completed VALOR trial comparing vosaroxin to cytarabine in acute myeloid leukemia (ASH 2014) accrued 711 patients\, and comprises the largest body of evidence for AML from a randomized phase 3 clinical trial. This adaptiv e event driven trial was designed with an interim analysis that allowed fo r early efficacy stopping\, early futility stopping\, unblinded sample siz e re-estimation\, or continuation as planned. The sample size re-estimatio n option was implemented. We will present top-line results from the trial and discuss the operational\, regulatory and statistical challenges that w ere faced along the way. To our knowledge this is the first phase 3 confir matory oncology trial in which unblinded sample size re-estimation was imp lemented.

Cyrus Mehta is President and co-founder of Cytel Corporat ion and Adjunct Professor of \; Biostatistics\, Harvard University. Cy tel is a leading provider of software and services for the design\, interi m monitoring and implementation of adaptive clinical trials. Dr. Mehta con sults extensively with the biopharmaceutical industry on group sequential and adaptive design\, offers workshops on these topics\, and serves on dat a monitoring and steering committees for trials in many therapeutic areas including oncology\, cardiology\, neurology and metabolic disease. He has led the development of \; the StatXact\, LogXact and East software pac kages that are widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry and at academ ic research centers. He publishes his methodological research in leading s tatistics journals and is a past co-winner of \; the George W. Snedeco r Award from the American Statistical Association. He is a Fellow of the A merican Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He was named Mosteller Statistician of the Year by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Statistical Association in 2000 \, and Outstanding Zoroastrian Entrepreneur by the World Zoroastrian Chamb er of Commerce in 2002.

11am-11:15am &ndash\; Coffee break< /strong>

11:15am &ndash\; 12:45am: Innovat ive Considerations on a Phase 2a Dose-Finding Strategy Using Bayesian Meth ods and MCP-Mod. \; James Wason (MRC Biostatistics Unit\, Cambridge\, UK)\, Julian Zhou (Roche Products\, Shanghai\, China)

Earl y phase clinical trials in patients who are currently on treatments may be difficult to recruit for. Owing to this limited availability of patients they often require the use of smaller numbers of patients and more innovat ive statistical methods. \; Often single agents\, developed for the sa me disease of interest are not sufficient and may need be used in combinat ion to be effective. \; Appropriate decsisions may also have to be mad e for doses\, treatment duration and combinations with other compounds.

The plan for the twelve-week phase 2a study in one such population wi ll involve an early futility look at week 2 based on a biomarker\, using B ayesian posterior probabilities. \; This will be followed by using&nbs p\; MCP-Mod at the end of study on a clinical response\, in order to inves tigate the dose response. \;

At week 2\, a biomarker is measur ed to see if there is a clinically meaningful effect at the \; target for appropriated doses. If not then new doses may need to be added. \; The posterior probability of the meaningful effect will be used in the de cision criteria.

At the end of the study MCP-Mod will be used in or der to investiagate the dose response. \; MCP-Mod involves pre-specify ing candidate dose-reponse models followed by statistical testing for dose -response signal whilst controlling the type I error. \; The best fitt ing model is then selected\, and the target dose estimated\, which is then recommended \; for phase 2b and phase 3 studies. The method has been qualified by the EMA as an efficient method of dose finding. \; \;

Simulations have been conducted to investigate the futility and d ose finding decisions in phase 2a and understand the operating characteris tics\, and comparisons made to a traditional dose finding paradigm\, which might involve fewer doses compared to a control using pairwise comparison s.

Dr James Wason \;is a senior investigator stat istician at the MRC Biostatistics unit (BSU) in Cambridge. He has been the re since doing his Ph.D. in 2006. Since 2009 he has worked in the BSU&rsqu o\;s Hub for Trials Methodology Research\, directed by Adrian Mander. His main research interests are adaptive designs for clinical trials\, efficie nt analysis of composite endpoints\, and the use of biomarkers in clinical trials. He is also the co-lead of the MRC Hub for Trials Methodology&rsqu o\;s stratified medicine working group.\n

12:45 noon- 1:45pm &nd ash\; Lunch

1:45pm &ndash\; 3:15pm: Defining\, Und erstanding and Communicating Decision Criteria in Early Clinical Developme nt. \; Peter Colman (UCB)

It is not uncommon to invest igate multiple indicators of potential clinical efficacy in an early study in patients. A broad swathe of biomarkers may be nominated to ensure that evidence of activity on the projected biochemical pathway is acquired and additional biomarkers may indicate the precursors of clinical benefit. Re gistration endpoints\, surrogates thereof or less-qualified biomarkers of efficacy may also be captured. The number of endpoints may easily exceed t he number of subjects in the study and so it is vital that the properties of any decisions are well understood and consistently communicated. We dis cuss one approach which elicits views on the combinations of results that would be considered positive or encouraging and seeks to assess the likely false-positive rates associated with the consequent decision criteria.&nb sp\; We illustrate the ideas with some real examples.

Peter spent t he first 29 years of his statistical career with Pfizer at their UK resear ch site in Sandwich. During this time he worked in Animal Health\, Clinica l Pharmacology and Early Clinical Development. He also experienced a phase III project for 6 months. For several years\, he led a group of statistic ians focussing on PK-PD Modelling &\; Simulation\, Genetics\, Clinical Technology and Outcomes Research. He returned to mainstream\, hands-on pro ject work and also contributed to a number of European collaborations (e.g . IMI SAFE-T). In 2011\, upon closure of the Sandwich site\, Peter moved t o AZ at Alderley Park\, where he worked on safety data and as a manager of statisticians in the oncology and anti-infectives area. He joined the UCB early development statistics team at UCB in 2013 where he contributes to the design of studies in the immunology and neuroscience areas. In his spa re time he plays classical double bass and he is currently the chair of Ma idstone Orchestral Society.

3:15pm &ndash\; 3:30pm &ndash\; Coffee Break

3:30pm &ndash\; 5pm: Tackling Real P roblems in Multi Regional Clinical Trials. \; Kevin Carroll (KJCStatis tics)

MRCTs are an increasingly necessary feature of moder n drug development. \; In areas like diabetes and cardiovascular disor ders\, or early adjuvant oncologic disease settings\, or where there is a regulatory requirement to rule out small\, but important safety issues suc h as in the ongoing cluster of trials investigating long acting beta agoni sts in the treatment of asthma\,  \;the demand for very large trials d rives the need for MRCTs. \; \; Such trials are needed to provide the power to address the underlying hypothesis of interest\, but can only do so under the assumption of no true regional heterogeneity. \;This t alk will address the implications of true regional differences in MRCTs an d will illustrate the real statistical and regulatory challenges faced by reference to recent case studies\, including the 18\,000 patient &lsquo\;P LATO&rsquo\; trial in acute coronary syndromes. \; \;

Kevin Joseph Carroll\, PhD\, CStat\, CSci\, Honorary Senior Le cturer Medical Statistics is an Independent Statistical Consultant and own er of KJCStatistics Ltd. \; Kevin has 26 years drug development of exp erience across all trial phases and multiple therapeutic areas including O ncology\, CV\, Metabolism\, Respiratory\, CNS and GI. \; Most recently Kevin held the positions of VP Statistics and Chief Statistician at Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and Expert Statistician with Boehringer-Ingelheim.& nbsp\; Kevin has extensive experience in the design\, conduct\, analysis a nd reporting of clinical trials. \;  \; \;As a Consultant\, Ke vin has gained experience in helping both small and large pharma and biote ch companies tackle statistical issues in development\, including the appl ication of innovative statistical approaches to trial design and analysis and regulatory product license applications. \; This includes the use of Bayesian decision-based designs to expedite effective decision making\, and the use of complex staged designs in pivotal Phase II/III and Phase I II trials to expedite overall development times. Kevin retains a strong te chnical interest in areas such as parametric survival modelling\, group se quential analysis\, adaptive designs and large outcomes trial design\, and a growing interest in the statistical issues associated with health econo mic analyses and network meta-analyses.

Registration: £\;50

END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR