SPIRIT: A seamless phase I/II randomized design for immunotherapy trials
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2018
Abstract
Immunotherapy—treatments that enlist the immune system to battle tumors—has received widespread attention in cancer research. Due to its unique features and mechanisms for treating cancer, immunotherapy requires novel clinical trial designs. We propose a Bayesian seamless phase I/II randomized design for immunotherapy trials (SPIRIT) to find the optimal biological dose (OBD) defined in terms of the restricted mean survival time. We jointly model progression-free survival and the immune response. Progression-free survival is used as the primary endpoint to determine the OBD, and the immune response is used as an ancillary endpoint to quickly screen out futile doses. Toxicity is monitored throughout the trial. The design consists of two seamlessly connected stages. The first stage identifies a set of safe doses. The second stage adaptively randomizes patients to the safe doses identified and uses their progression-free survival and immune response to find the OBD. The simulation study shows that the SPIRIT has desirable operating characteristics and outperforms the conventional design.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Pharmaceutical Statistics
First Page
527
Last Page
540
Recommended Citation
Guo, B., Li, D., & Yuan, Y. (2018). SPIRIT: A seamless phase I/II randomized design for immunotherapy trials. Pharmaceutical Statistics, 17 (5), 527-540. https://doi.org/10.1002/PST.1869