One of my wife’s favorite TV shows is ‘Quattro Ristoranti’ (Four Restaurants). In each episode of the show, 4 restaurants of the same style are assessed and the one getting the best evaluation wins the prize. One of the first things the TV presenter Alessandro Borghese, a famous Italian chef, does while visiting the restaurant is to assess (of course!) the kitchen and how much the kitchen and...

Topics: CDISC, SDTM, ADaM, PhUSE, Statistical Programming, FDA

 

In this blog, we talk with Heiko Götte, Senior Expert Biostatistician at Merck about his upcoming presentation at Cytel’s East User Group Meeting on 14th and 15th November at Merck Darmstadt, in Germany. The topic Heiko will address is Decision Making in Development Programs with Targeted Therapies and he explains to us why this is a key topic for pharmaceutical companies today as they...

Topics: Adaptive Clinical Trials, Trial Design, phase 2, Program and Portfolio Optimization, Simulations, East, adaptive designs, Bayesian Methods, Phase I, Biomarkers, go-no-go

At Cytel we believe that expert statistical input has the power to shape the future of clinical development: de-risking portfolios, accelerating timelines, and increasing the probability of success.

In this blog we talk to Adam who lives in North Carolina United States to find out more about his career path, achievements, current role at Cytel and his interests outside of work.

Topics: Statistical Analysis, careers, clinical research, Statistical Programming, CRO, Recruitment, Cytel Strategic Consulting, biostatistics, adaptive designs, Adaptive Clinical Trials, clinical trials, Regulation

 

Immunotherapy has brought us many promises, most notably, of a future where humans are able to harness their body’s own ability to protect them from illness. Immuno-oncology (IO) may be the ultimate frontier of that future reality, with a promise of being able to help our bodies deflect or cure us of any malignancies. Today, these therapies include cell therapies, cancer vaccine, and...

Topics: Oncology, immunotherapy, biostatistics

 

The biopharmaceutical and healthcare industries now collect more data than ever before due to advances in the variety of information sources combined with the ability to store vast quantities of diverse data. Sophisticated machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques allow us to accessand analyze any combination of a multitude of data sources. The way that traditional...

Topics: biostatistics, data science, real world evidence

 

On August 29th 2018, the FDA announced (1) that it would be establishing a Complex Innovative Trial Design (CID) Pilot Meeting Program. This follows the release earlier in August of a draft guidance (2) to help advance effective and innovative clinical trial designs early in drug development that can expedite new cancer therapies.

Topics: biostatistics, adaptive trials, adaptive sample size re-estimation, Seamless designs, FDA, Oncology

 

EnForeSys is Cytel’s tool for patient recruitment planning. We have discussed on the blog recently with Tufts University's Center for the Study of Drug Development, Ken Getz, the problem the industry continues to face with patient recruitment, and the fact that most trials significantly exceed their original planned duration. In the face of this problem there's a pressing need to create more...

Topics: patient enrollment, enforesys, clinical trials

 

JSM 2018, ASA’s annual gathering of over 6500 attendees attracted statisticians and data scientists to the beautiful city of Vancouver on July 28 – August 2. The conference offers a one of a kind opportunity for statisticians to exchange ideas and explore opportunities for collaboration. In this blog, we will provide access to our team's slide decks from the event, as well as some of their...

Topics: biostatistics, adaptive designs, data science, Bayesian, careers

Topics: Statistical Analysis, careers, clinical research, Statistical Programming, CRO, Recruitment, Cytel Strategic Consulting, biostatistics, adaptive designs, Adaptive Clinical Trials, clinical trials, Regulation, Trial Quality

 After having spent 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry, in May of 2018, I decided to explore new horizons and took the lead of the newly created Basel statistical programming team at Cytel. Building a new team in an exciting environment and being part of a successful story was the challenge I was looking for. In this blog, I will share my perspectives on what a sponsor programmer might...

Topics: Statistical Programming, clinical research, careers

 

Cytel’s 7th East User Group Meeting (EUGM) will take place on November 14 & 15, 2018 at Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, bringing together industry experts, thought leaders and applied statisticians to discuss the future of clinical trials.

The agenda has been developed collaboratively by the EUGM Scientific Committee, and keynote speakers will include Stephen Senn, Meinhard Kieser, Thomas...

Topics: Adaptive Clinical Trials, Trial Design, phase 2, Program and Portfolio Optimization, Simulations, East, adaptive designs, Bayesian Methods

We have written on the blog in the past about the value that a statistical consultant can bring to your team, and to the overall clinical development process. Statistical consultants can be instrumental to the success of your development program, providing a variety of input from creating innovative trial designs that improve information quality and efficiency, to supporting regulatory...

Topics: Cytel Strategic Consulting, pharmacometrics, quantitative decision-making, model-informed-drug-development

By Gordhan Bagri and Munshi Imran Hossain with  H A S Shri Kishore

Shiny (from RStudio) is one of the most popular R packages. The package allows programmers to create applications with interactive user interfaces. These applications can then be deployed for non-programmers to perform analysis. Non-programmers can, therefore, make use of the statistical capabilities of R by means of point and...

Topics: data science, Statistical Analysis, Cytel Strategic Consulting, R language, R programming

In this blog, we share a new infographic based on this popular blog post illustrating some of the critical interactions that need to take place between data management and statistics groups to help ensure efficiency and data quality. 

Topics: big data, EDC, data manager, Clinical Data, database build, Clinical Research Services, Data Management, clinical trials, Statistical Analysis

At Cytel our strategic consulting team works on a wide range of projects including: Identifying the best clinical trial design, implementing adaptive designs, developing a regulatory strategy and interacting with regulators.

In this blog we talk to Sam who lives in the Boston area, to find out more about his career path, current role at Cytel, industry experience and his interests outside of...

Topics: Statistical Analysis, careers, clinical research, Statistical Programming, CRO, Recruitment, Cytel Strategic Consulting, biostatistics, adaptive designs, Adaptive Clinical Trials, clinical trials

A recent article published by Cytel authors Samadhan Ghubade, Sharayu Paranjpe, Kushagra Gupta, Anil Gore and colleague Krishna Asvalayan in the journal Current Science, tackles the topic of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) – a matter of great concern in drug research. The authors focused their research on drugs which had been either banned or withdrawn due to a serious problem of ADRs and...

Topics: data science, signal detection, pharmacovigilance, Statistical Analysis, Cytel Strategic Consulting

In this blog we share a case study of how we established and ramped up a functional service outsourcing partnership for biostatistics, programming and data management.

Topics: SAS, Statistical Programming, outsourcing

 

 It’s shaping up to be a busy year for Cytel’s software development team with a number of upgrades and planned launches across our range of tools. (Watch this space for announcements soon on new quantitative decision-making software OK GO and an upgrade to EnForeSys). East, our industry leading platform for clinical trial design, simulation, and monitoring will be unveiling version 6.5 in...

Topics: Adaptive Clinical Trials, Trial Design, phase 2, Program and Portfolio Optimization, Simulations, East

A number of the Cytel team were in Amsterdam, 3rd- 6th June 2018 for the PSI Conference. This year’s conference was held at the magnificent Beurs Van Berlage, a venue full of history and interesting architectural features. We took the opportunity to give delegates a first look at OK GO, our new clinical trial Go/No-Go decision-making software in this magnificent setting.

In this blog, we'll...

Topics: biostatistics, adaptive designs, PSI Conference, Clinical Data, Adaptive Clinical Trials, data science, estimands, Bayesian

 

By Esha Senchaudhuri

With thanks also to Jitendarreddy Seelam and Ramanatha Saralaya for their input.

The fact of the matter is that I now want to recall everything, every trifle, every little detail. I still want to collect my thoughts and - I can't, and now there are these little details, these little details...” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One

Old Fyodor was hardly talking about...

Topics: clinical trials, Clinical Development Strategy, Early Phase Trials, pharmacology