Adjustment for exploratory cut-off selection in randomized clinical trials with survival endpoint

Defining the target population based on predictive biomarkers plays an important role during clinical development. After establishing a relationship between a biomarker candidate and response to treatment in exploratory phases, a subsequent confirmatory trial ideally involves only subjects with high...

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Main Authors: Götte, Heiko (Author) , Kirchner, Marietta (Author) , Kieser, Meinhard (Author)
Format: Article (Journal)
Language:English
Published: 2020
In: Biometrical journal
Year: 2019, Volume: 62, Issue: 3, Pages: 627-642
ISSN:1521-4036
DOI:10.1002/bimj.201800302
Online Access:Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1002/bimj.201800302
Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bimj.201800302
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Author Notes:Heiko Götte, Marietta Kirchner, Meinhard Kieser
Description
Summary:Defining the target population based on predictive biomarkers plays an important role during clinical development. After establishing a relationship between a biomarker candidate and response to treatment in exploratory phases, a subsequent confirmatory trial ideally involves only subjects with high potential of benefiting from the new compound. In order to identify those subjects in case of a continuous biomarker, a cut-off is needed. Usually, a cut-off is chosen that resulted in a subgroup with a large observed treatment effect in an exploratory trial. However, such a data-driven selection may lead to overoptimistic expectations for the subsequent confirmatory trial. Treatment effect estimates, probability of success, and posterior probabilities are useful measures for deciding whether or not to conduct a confirmatory trial enrolling the biomarker-defined population. These measures need to be adjusted for selection bias. We extend previously introduced Approximate Bayesian Computation techniques for adjustment of subgroup selection bias to a time-to-event setting with cut-off selection. Challenges in this setting are that treatment effects become time-dependent and that subsets are defined by the biomarker distribution. Simulation studies show that the proposed method provides adjusted statistical measures which are superior to naïve Maximum Likelihood estimators as well as simple shrinkage estimators.
Item Description:Gesehen am 17.07.2020
First published: 07 October 2019
Physical Description:Online Resource
ISSN:1521-4036
DOI:10.1002/bimj.201800302