A dose-finding design for phase I clinical trials based on Bayesian stochastic approximation

Background Current dose-finding designs for phase I clinical trials can correctly select the MTD in a range of 30-80% depending on various conditions based on a sample of 30 subjects. However, there is still an unmet need for efficiency and cost saving. Methods We propose a novel dose-finding design...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBMC medical research methodology Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
Main Authors Xu, Jin, Zhang, Dapeng, Mu, Rongji
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London BioMed Central Ltd 01.10.2022
BioMed Central
BMC
Subjects
Adaptive design
Algorithms
Approximation
Dose-finding
Drug dosages
Efficiency
Hypothesis testing
Maximum tolerated dose
Medical research
Methods
Probability
Sensitivity analysis
Stochastic approximation
China
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Summary:Background Current dose-finding designs for phase I clinical trials can correctly select the MTD in a range of 30-80% depending on various conditions based on a sample of 30 subjects. However, there is still an unmet need for efficiency and cost saving. Methods We propose a novel dose-finding design based on Bayesian stochastic approximation. The design features utilization of dose level information through local adaptive modelling and free assumption of toxicity probabilities and hyper-parameters. It allows a flexible target toxicity rate and varying cohort size. And we extend it to accommodate historical information via prior effective sample size. We compare the proposed design to some commonly used methods in terms of accuracy and safety by simulation. Results On average, our design can improve the percentage of correct selection to about 60% when the MTD resides at a early or middle position in the search domain and perform comparably to other competitive methods otherwise. A free online software package is provided to facilitate the application, where a simple decision tree for the design can be pre-printed beforehand. Conclusion The paper proposes a novel dose-finding design for phase I clinical trials. Applying the design to future cancer trials can greatly improve the efficiency, consequently save cost and shorten the development period. Keywords: Adaptive design, Dose-finding, Maximum tolerated dose, Stochastic approximation
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ISSN:1471-2288
1471-2288
DOI:10.1186/s12874-022-01741-3