Optimal response-adaptive randomized designs for multi-armed survival trials

Extension of Fisher's least significant difference method to multi-armed group-sequential response-adaptive designs

Multi-armed multi-stage designs evaluate experimental treatments using a control arm at interim analyses. Incorporating response-adaptive randomisation in these designs allows early stopping, faster treatment selection and more patients to be assigned to the more promising treatments. Existing frequentist multi-armed multi-stage designs demonstrate that the family-wise error rate is strongly controlled, but they may be too conservative and lack power when the experimental treatments are very different therapies rather than doses of the same drug. Moreover, the designs use a fixed allocation ratio. In this article, Fisher's least significant difference method extended to group-sequential response-adaptive designs is investigated. It is shown mathematically that the information time continues after dropping inferior arms, and hence the error-spending approach can be used to control the family-wise error rate. Two optimal allocations were considered. One ensures efficient estimation of the treatment effects and the other maximises the power subject to a fixed total sample size. Operating characteristics of the group-sequential response-adaptive design for normal and censored survival outcomes based on simulation and redesigning the NeoSphere trial were compared with those of a fixed-sample design. Results show that the adaptive design attains efficient and ethical advantages, and that the family-wise error rate is well controlled.

Doubly adaptive biased coin design to improve Bayesian clinical trials with time-to-event endpoints

Clinical trialists often face the challenge of balancing scientific questions with other design features, such as improving efficiency, minimizing exposure to inferior treatments, and simultaneously comparing multiple treatments. While Bayesian response adaptive randomization (RAR) is a popular and effective method for achieving these objectives, it is known to have large variability and a lack of explicit theoretical results, making its use in clinical trials a subject of concern. It is desirable to propose a design that targets the same allocation proportion as Bayesian RAR and achieves the above objectives but addresses the concerns over Bayesian RAR. We propose the frequentist doubly adaptive biased coin designs (DBCD) targeting ethical allocation proportions from the Bayesian framework to satisfy different objectives in clinical trials with time-to-event endpoints. We derive the theoretical properties of the proposed adaptive randomization design and show through comprehensive numerical simulations that it can achieve ethical objectives without sacrificing efficiency. Our combined theoretical and numerical results offer a strong foundation for the practical use of RAR in real clinical trials.

An Overview of Adaptive Designs and Some of Their Challenges, Benefits, and Innovative Applications

Adaptive designs are increasingly developed and used to improve all phases of clinical trials and in biomedical studies in various ways to address different statistical issues. We first present an overview of adaptive designs and note their numerous advantages over traditional clinical trials. In particular, we provide a concrete demonstration that shows how recent adaptive design strategies can further improve an adaptive trial implemented 13 years ago. Despite their usefulness, adaptive designs are still not widely implemented in clinical trials. We offer a few possible reasons and propose some ways to use them more broadly in practice, which include greater availability of software tools and interactive websites to generate optimal adaptive trials freely and effectively, including the use of metaheuristics to facilitate the search for an efficient trial design. To this end, we present several web-based tools for finding various adaptive and nonadaptive optimal designs and discuss nature-inspired metaheuristics. Metaheuristics are assumptions-free general purpose optimization algorithms widely used in computer science and engineering to tackle all kinds of challenging optimization problems, and their use in designing clinical trials is just emerging. We describe a few recent such applications and some of their capabilities for designing various complex trials. Particle swarm optimization is an exemplary nature-inspired algorithm, and similar to others, it has a simple definition but many moving parts, making it hard to study its properties analytically. We investigated one of its hitherto unstudied issues on how to bring back out-of-range candidates during the search for the optimum of the search domain and show that different strategies can impact the success and time of the search. We conclude with a few caveats on the use of metaheuristics for a successful search.

The Future Glioblastoma Clinical Trials Landscape: Early Phase 0, Window of Opportunity, and Adaptive Phase I-III Studies

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Innovative clinical trial designs for glioblastoma (GBM) are needed to expedite drug discovery. Phase 0, window of opportunity, and adaptive designs have been proposed, but their advanced methodologies and underlying biostatistics are not widely known. This review summarizes phase 0, window of opportunity, and adaptive phase I-III clinical trial designs in GBM tailored to physicians.

RECENT FINDINGS

Phase 0, window of opportunity, and adaptive trials are now being implemented for GBM. These trials can remove ineffective therapies earlier during drug development and improve trial efficiency. There are two ongoing adaptive platform trials: GBM Adaptive Global Innovative Learning Environment (GBM AGILE) and the INdividualized Screening trial of Innovative GBM Therapy (INSIGhT). The future clinical trials landscape in GBM will increasingly involve phase 0, window of opportunity, and adaptive phase I-III studies. Continued collaboration between physicians and biostatisticians will be critical for implementing these trial designs.

An optimal multiarmed response adaptive design for survival outcome with independent censoring

Compromising ethics and precision in the context of a multiarmed clinical trial, an optimal order adjusted response adaptive design is proposed for survival outcomes subject to independent random censoring. The operating characteristics of the proposed design and the follow-up inference are studied both theoretically as well as empirically and are compared with those of the competitors. Applicability of the developed design is further illustrated through redesigning a real clinical trial with survival responses.

A simple solution to the inadequacy of asymptotic likelihood-based inference for response-adaptive clinical trials

The present paper discusses drawbacks and limitations of likelihood-based inference in sequential clinical trials for treatment comparisons managed via Response-Adaptive Randomization. Taking into account the most common statistical models for the primary outcome—namely binary, Poisson, exponential and normal data—we derive the conditions under which (i) the classical confidence intervals degenerate and (ii) the Wald test becomes inconsistent and strongly affected by the nuisance parameters, also displaying a non monotonic power. To overcome these drawbacks, we provide a very simple solution that could preserve the fundamental properties of likelihood-based inference. Several illustrative examples and simulation studies are presented in order to confirm the relevance of our results and provide some practical recommendations.

Optimal and ethical designs for hypothesis testing in multi-arm exponential trials

Multi-arm clinical trials are complex experiments which involve several objectives. The demand for unequal allocations in a multi-treatment context is growing and adaptive designs are being increasingly used in several areas of medical research. For uncensored and censored exponential responses, we propose a constrained optimization approach in order to derive the design maximizing the power of the multivariate test of homogeneity, under a suitable ethical constraint. In the absence of censoring, we obtain a very simple closed-form solution that dominates the balanced design in terms of power and ethics. Our suggestion can also accommodate delayed responses and staggered entries, and can be implemented via response adaptive rules. While other targets proposed in the literature could present an unethical behavior, the suggested optimal allocation is frequently unbalanced by assigning more patients to the best treatment, both in the absence and presence of censoring. We evaluate the operating characteristics of our proposal theoretically and by simulations, also redesigning a real lung cancer trial, showing that the constrained optimal target guarantees very good performances in terms of ethical demands, power and estimation precision. Therefore, it is a valid and useful tool in designing clinical trials, especially oncological trials and clinical experiments for grave and novel infectious diseases, where the ethical concern is of primary importance.

Compound optimal allocations for survival clinical trials

The aim of the present paper is to provide optimal allocations for comparative clinical trials with survival outcomes. The suggested targets are derived adopting a compound optimization strategy based on a subjective weighting of the relative importance of inferential demands and ethical concerns. The ensuing compound optimal targets are continuous functions of the treatment effects, so we provide the conditions under which they can be approached by standard response-adaptive randomization procedures, also guaranteeing the applicability of the classical asymptotic inference. The operating characteristics of the suggested methodology are verified both theoretically and by simulation, including the robustness to model misspecification. With respect to the other available proposals, our strategy always assigns more patients to the best treatment without compromising inference, taking into account estimation efficiency and power as well. We illustrate our procedure by redesigning two real oncological trials.

A Randomized Two Stage Adaptively Censored Design With Application to Testing

A two stage randomized design is developed for two treatment clinical trials in which response variables are exponential and the observations are censored by using failure censoring and time censoring in the first and second stages respectively. The censoring time for the second stage is determined from the outcomes of the first stage. An application to testing for the equality of treatment effects is given along with a comparative study with relevant properties.

Optimal designs for testing hypothesis in multiarm clinical trials

The present paper deals with the problem of designing randomized multiarm clinical trials for treatment comparisons in order to achieve a suitable trade-off among inferential precision and ethical concerns. Although the large majority of the literature is focused on the estimation of the treatment effects, in particular for the case of two treatments with binary outcomes, the present paper takes into account the inferential goal of maximizing the power of statistical tests to detect correct conclusions about the treatment effects for normally response trials. After discussing the allocation optimizing the power of the classical multivariate test of homogeneity, we suggest a multipurpose design methodology, based on constrained optimization, which maximizes the power of the test under a suitable ethical constraint reflecting the effectiveness of the treatments. The ensuing optimal allocation depends in general on the unknown model parameters but, contrary to the unconstrained optimal solution or to some targets proposed in the literature, it is a non-degenerate continuous function of the treatment contrasts, and therefore it can be approached by standard response-adaptive randomization procedures. The properties of this constrained optimal allocation are described both theoretically and through suitable examples, showing good performances both in terms of ethical gain and statistical efficiency, taking into account estimation precision as well.

Response-adaptive treatment allocation for survival trials with clustered right-censored data

A comparison of 2 treatments with survival outcomes in a clinical study may require treatment randomization on clusters of multiple units with correlated responses. For example, for patients with otitis media in both ears, a specific treatment is normally given to a single patient, and hence, the 2 ears constitute a cluster. Statistical procedures are available for comparison of treatment efficacies. The conventional approach for treatment allocation is the adoption of a balanced design, in which half of the patients are assigned to each treatment arm. However, considering the increasing acceptability of responsive-adaptive designs in recent years because of their desirable features, we have developed a response-adaptive treatment allocation scheme for survival trials with clustered data. The proposed treatment allocation scheme is superior to the balanced design in that it allows more patients to receive the better treatment. At the same time, the test power for comparing treatment efficacies using our treatment allocation scheme remains highly competitive. The advantage of the proposed randomization procedure is supported by a simulation study and the redesign of a clinical study.

Implementing Optimal Designs for Dose-Response Studies Through Adaptive Randomization for a Small Population Group

In dose-response studies with censored time-to-event outcomes, D-optimal designs depend on the true model and the amount of censored data. In practice, such designs can be implemented adaptively, by performing dose assignments according to updated knowledge of the dose-response curve at interim analysis. It is also essential that treatment allocation involves randomization-to mitigate various experimental biases and enable valid statistical inference at the end of the trial. In this work, we perform a comparison of several adaptive randomization procedures that can be used for implementing D-optimal designs for dose-response studies with time-to-event outcomes with small to moderate sample sizes. We consider single-stage, two-stage, and multi-stage adaptive designs. We also explore robustness of the designs to experimental (chronological and selection) biases. Simulation studies provide evidence that both the choice of an allocation design and a randomization procedure to implement the target allocation impact the quality of dose-response estimation, especially for small samples. For best performance, a multi-stage adaptive design with small cohort sizes should be implemented using a randomization procedure that closely attains the targeted D-optimal design at each stage. The results of the current work should help clinical investigators select an appropriate randomization procedure for their dose-response study.

Adaptive Optimal Designs for Dose-Finding Studies with Time-to-Event Outcomes

We consider optimal design problems for dose-finding studies with censored Weibull time-to-event outcomes. Locally D-optimal designs are investigated for a quadratic dose-response model for log-transformed data subject to right censoring. Two-stage adaptive D-optimal designs using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) model updating are explored through simulation for a range of different dose-response scenarios and different amounts of censoring in the model. The adaptive optimal designs are found to be nearly as efficient as the locally D-optimal designs. A popular equal allocation design can be highly inefficient when the amount of censored data is high and when the Weibull model hazard is increasing. The issues of sample size planning/early stopping for an adaptive trial are investigated as well. The adaptive D-optimal design with early stopping can potentially reduce study size while achieving similar estimation precision as the fixed allocation design.

A Bayesian Hybrid Adaptive Randomisation Design for Clinical Trials with Survival Outcomes

BACKGROUND

Response-adaptive randomisation designs have been proposed to improve the efficiency of phase III randomised clinical trials and improve the outcomes of the clinical trial population. In the setting of failure time outcomes, Zhang and Rosenberger (2007) developed a response-adaptive randomisation approach that targets an optimal allocation, based on a fixed sample size.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this research is to propose a response-adaptive randomisation procedure for survival trials with an interim monitoring plan, based on the following optimal criterion: for fixed variance of the estimated log hazard ratio, what allocation minimizes the expected hazard of failure? We demonstrate the utility of the design by redesigning a clinical trial on multiple myeloma.

METHODS

To handle continuous monitoring of data, we propose a Bayesian response-adaptive randomisation procedure, where the log hazard ratio is the effect measure of interest. Combining the prior with the normal likelihood, the mean posterior estimate of the log hazard ratio allows derivation of the optimal target allocation. We perform a simulation study to assess and compare the performance of this proposed Bayesian hybrid adaptive design to those of fixed, sequential or adaptive - either frequentist or fully Bayesian - designs. Non informative normal priors of the log hazard ratio were used, as well as mixture of enthusiastic and skeptical priors. Stopping rules based on the posterior distribution of the log hazard ratio were computed. The method is then illustrated by redesigning a phase III randomised clinical trial of chemotherapy in patients with multiple myeloma, with mixture of normal priors elicited from experts.

RESULTS

As expected, there was a reduction in the proportion of observed deaths in the adaptive vs. non-adaptive designs; this reduction was maximized using a Bayes mixture prior, with no clear-cut improvement by using a fully Bayesian procedure. The use of stopping rules allows a slight decrease in the observed proportion of deaths under the alternate hypothesis compared with the adaptive designs with no stopping rules.

CONCLUSIONS

Such Bayesian hybrid adaptive survival trials may be promising alternatives to traditional designs, reducing the duration of survival trials, as well as optimizing the ethical concerns for patients enrolled in the trial.

RARtool: A MATLAB Software Package for Designing Response-Adaptive Randomized Clinical Trials with Time-to-Event Outcomes

Response-adaptive randomization designs are becoming increasingly popular in clinical trial practice. In this paper, we present RARtool, a user interface software developed in MATLAB for designing response-adaptive randomized comparative clinical trials with censored time-to-event outcomes. The RARtool software can compute different types of optimal treatment allocation designs, and it can simulate response-adaptive randomization procedures targeting selected optimal allocations. Through simulations, an investigator can assess design characteristics under a variety of experimental scenarios and select the best procedure for practical implementation. We illustrate the utility of our RARtool software by redesigning a survival trial from the literature.

Ethical and regulatory considerations in the design of traumatic brain injury clinical studies

Research is essential for improving outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the ubiquity, variability, and nature of TBI create many ethical issues and accompanying regulations for research. To capture the complexity and importance of designing and conducting TBI research within the framework of key ethical principles, a few highly relevant topics are highlighted. The selected topics are: (1) research conducted in emergency settings; (2) maintaining equipoise in TBI clinical trials; (3) TBI research on vulnerable populations; and (4) ethical considerations for sharing data. The topics aim to demonstrate the dynamic and multifaceted challenges of TBI research, and also to stress the value of addressing these challenges with the key ethical principles of respect, beneficence, and justice. Much has been accomplished to ensure that TBI research meets the highest ethical standards and has fair and enforceable regulations, but important challenges remain and continued efforts are needed by all members of the TBI research community.

Managing competing demands in the implementation of response-adaptive randomization in a large multicenter phase III acute stroke trial

It is well known that competing demands exist between the control of important covariate imbalance and protection of treatment allocation randomness in confirmative clinical trials. When implementing a response-adaptive randomization algorithm in confirmative clinical trials designed under a frequentist framework, additional competing demands emerge between the shift of the treatment allocation ratio and the preservation of the power. Based on a large multicenter phase III stroke trial, we present a patient randomization scheme that manages these competing demands by applying a newly developed minimal sufficient balancing design for baseline covariates and a cap on the treatment allocation ratio shift in order to protect the allocation randomness and the power. Statistical properties of this randomization plan are studied by computer simulation. Trial operation characteristics, such as patient enrollment rate and primary outcome response delay, are also incorporated into the randomization plan.

Efficient and ethical response-adaptive randomization designs for multi-arm clinical trials with Weibull time-to-event outcomes

We consider a design problem for a clinical trial with multiple treatment arms and time-to-event primary outcomes that are modeled using the Weibull family of distributions. The D-optimal design for the most precise estimation of model parameters is derived, along with compound optimal allocation designs that provide targeted efficiencies for various estimation problems and ethical considerations. The proposed optimal allocation designs are studied theoretically and are implemented using response-adaptive randomization for a clinical trial with censored Weibull outcomes. We compare the merits of our multiple-objective response-adaptive designs with traditional randomization designs and show that our designs are more flexible, realistic, generally more ethical, and frequently provide higher efficiencies for estimating different sets of parameters.

On a class of optimal covariate-adjusted response adaptive designs for survival outcomes

A class of optimal covariate-adjusted response adaptive procedures is developed for phase III clinical trials when the treatment response is a survival time and there is random censoring. The basic aim is to develop an allocation design by combining the ethical aspects with statistical precision in a reasonable way under the presence of covariate information. Considering minimisation of total hazards as the ethical requirement, the proposed procedure is assessed in terms of the assignment to the better treatment and the efficiency (i.e. power) to detect a small departure in treatment effectiveness. The applicability of the proposed methodology is also illustrated using a real data set.

Adaptive randomization for clinical trials

In February 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA, 2010 ) drafted guidance that discusses the statistical, clinical, and regulatory aspects of various adaptive designs for clinical trials. An important class of adaptive designs is adaptive randomization, which is considered very briefly in subsection VI.B of the guidance. The objective of this paper is to review several important new classes of adaptive randomization procedures and convey information on the recent developments in the literature on this topic. Much of this literature has been focused on the development of methodology to address past criticisms and concerns that have hindered the broader use of adaptive randomization. We conclude that adaptive randomization is a very broad area of experimental design that has important application in modern clinical trials.

Response-adaptive designs for continuous treatment responses in phase III clinical trials: A review

A variety of response-adaptive randomization procedures have been proposed in literature assuming binary outcomes. However, the list is not so long for continuous outcomes though many real clinical trials deal with continuous treatment responses. In this paper, we attempt to explore the available procedures together with a comparison of their performances. Some real-life adaptive trial is also reviewed.