
Perspectives on Enquiry & Evidence
Cytel's blog featuring the latest industry insights.

September 15, 2021
There is recognized heterogeneity within any given tumor‐type from patient to patient (inter‐patient heterogeneity),...
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July 2, 2021
Use of Rolling-enrollment Designs to Accelerate Clinical Trials
Popular statistical designs, such as CRM (O’Quigley et al., 1990), mTPI-2 (Guo et al., 2017), and i3+3 (Liu et al.,...
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June 9, 2021
Selecting a Clinical Trial Design: How Broadly Should You Explore?
When selecting clinical trial designs, how many design options should a sponsor explore? Would a sponsor feel more...
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June 2, 2021
A Data-Infused Approach to De-Risking Clinical Trials
For many decades the Pareto Frontier has been employed by actors in the private sector to evaluate and understand the...
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May 28, 2021
Use of Bayesian Approach in Basket Trial Design
Advancements in biomarkers and momentum in precision medicine has paved the foundation for complex studies like basket...
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May 14, 2021
Starting the Conversation Early: Incorporating Business Considerations in Optimal Selection of Trial Design
When developing clinical strategy, applying familiar business principles to the specific requirements of clinical...
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May 4, 2021
New Publication on Adaptive Platform Trials
As healthcare systems across the world, continue to grapple with the pressures of COVID-19, Cytel advances yet another...
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April 28, 2021
Trial Selection: From Art to Science
Recently, Cytel co-founder Professor Cyrus Mehta noted that, “Clinical trial design selection is too much like an art,...
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April 20, 2021
New Dimensions of Clinical Trial Optimization
For much of the past three decades, even as methodologies for clinical trial design have advanced and refined, the idea...
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April 14, 2021
Reaping the Benefits of Bayesian Innovation
In the era of modern clinical development, several companies are turning towards novel and innovative approaches such...
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March 18, 2021
Computing & Statistics: Are You Ready for the Industry Transformation?
Over the past ten years High-Performance Computing (HPC) has transformed medical research through advances in genomics,...
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February 19, 2021
Selecting Your Next Clinical Trial Design Using Quantitative Methods
C-Suite and R&D Decision-Makers are always striving to make evidence-driven decisions. Yet the rules by which evidence...
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February 18, 2021
Introduction to Evidence Synthesis and Bayesian dynamic borrowing
In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in historical borrowing or augmented trials. There is an...
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February 2, 2021
Bayesian Methods for Master Protocols
As the use of master protocols becomes more prevalent in drug development, Bayesian methods are extensively used to...
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January 26, 2021
Cytel Thought Leadership on Power of Bayesian Methods
Bayesian models offer a flexible way of incorporating historical controls in the analysis of trial data (whether single...
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December 17, 2020
2020 Recap by Yannis Jemiai, Chief Scientific Officer, Cytel
As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Yannis Jemiai plays a pivotal role in maintaining Cytel’s well-established reputation...
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December 16, 2020
2020 Recap by Pantelis Vlachos, Principal/Strategic Consultant, Cytel
As we prepare to close the door on 2020, we asked Pantelis Vlachos, Principal/Strategic Consultant for Cytel, to share...
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December 15, 2020
Satisficing, Optimizing and Globally Optimizing Trial Designs
When designing clinical trials, biostatisticians and clinical development teams are often faced with a conundrum. Given...
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December 9, 2020
7 Key Features of Strategic Clinical Trial Design
As a part of Cytel’s Advanced Design Framework, a new Framework for the statistical design of clinical trials, Cytel...
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December 3, 2020
New Whitepaper: Reimagining Clinical-Trials
Increasing Clinical Development Productivity Using Statistics and Cloud-Computing The need for Re-imagining Clinical...
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December 2, 2020
Program and Portfolio Optimization: A New Paradigm
Significant advances have been made to enhance the efficiency of clinical trial designs. However, the traditional...
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November 18, 2020
We can design over 100,000 clinical trials in less than an hour
The current state of the clinical trials industry faces a challenge that was only hypothetical three or four years ago....
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November 17, 2020
Role of Prediction and Causal Inference in Clinical Research
As a part of Cytel’s "New Horizons Webinar Series", Alind Gupta, Senior Data Scientist, presents case studies from his...
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November 16, 2020
Bayesian Methods for Multiple Cohort Expansion (MuCE) designs
MUCE is a Bayesian solution for cohort expansion trials where multiple dose(s) and multiple indication(s) are tested in...
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November 11, 2020
Interview with Yannis Jemiai: Advanced Design Framework
The widespread use of cloud-computing has altered the clinical trial design process. Whereas three or four years ago,...
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November 10, 2020
Key Design Considerations for Platform Trials
Platform trials are a new type of clinical trials where multiple interventions can be evaluated simultaneously against...
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November 4, 2020
Cytel Introduces Advanced Design Framework: Part 3 - Communication Techniques to Ensure Alignment on Data-Driven Clinical Trial Designs
Cytel has recently revealed its Advanced Design Framework, a method developed by Cytel’s thought leaders that draws on...
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October 29, 2020
Advanced Design Framework: Part 2 - A Quantitative Evaluation Approach
Cytel has recently revealed its Advanced Design Framework, a method developed by Cytel’s thought leaders that draws on...
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October 26, 2020
Need for Technology Solutions to Support Computationally
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are under pressure to deliver more and deliver faster with fewer resources. The...
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October 21, 2020
Advanced Design Framework: Part 1 - Exploration of Design Space
Cytel has recently revealed its Advanced Design Framework, a method developed by Cytel’s thought-leaders after a decade...
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October 15, 2020
An Advanced Design Framework for Clinical Development in the Era of Cloud-Computing
For over a decade, advanced trial design techniques have promised efficient trials with accelerated timelines,...
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October 9, 2020
Cyrus Mehta on Increasing the Power of Platform Trials
Even before the era of COVID-19, significant attention was channeled to the overwhelming potential of adaptive MAMS...
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October 5, 2020
The Meta-Analytic-Predictive Priors Generation and Comparisons
Staying abreast of the rapid pace of clinical development means adopting innovative or computationally intensive...
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October 1, 2020
Improve Trial Design with Sequential Design and Sample Size
Methods involving Group Sequential Designs are one of the earliest deviations from a traditional two-arm clinical trial...
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September 30, 2020
A Virtual Event Brought to you by Cytel and Novartis on Innovations
Today, there is a need for advanced quantitative techniques to combine all available information for better decision...
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September 29, 2020
The New Horizons Series: Adaptive Multi-arm Multi-stage Clinical Trials
Innovation in trial designs are offering new routes forward for organizations of any size. They are now also aligned...
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September 9, 2020
Importance of Designing Clinical Trials from a Program Perspective
Cytel’s co-founder, Nitin Patel, conducted a webinar on designing clinical trials from a program-level perspective. His...
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September 4, 2020
Cytel Co-Founder Cyrus Mehta Presents at the Heart Failure Collaboratory, a Public-Private Partnership with FDA
On Friday September 11, Cyrus Mehta, co-founder of Cytel, will be delivering a talk to the Heart Failure Collaboratory,...
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August 31, 2020
Adopt innovative and computationally intensive designs with East Alloy
Pantelis Vlachos, Principal, Strategic Consultant at Cytel, conducted a webinar to introduce the capabilities of East...
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August 26, 2020
Career Perspectives: Interview with Yannis Jemiai, Chief Scientific Officer
As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Yannis Jemiai plays a pivotal role in maintaining Cytel’s well-established reputation...
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August 25, 2020
Nitin Patel on Designing Clinical Trials from a Program Perspective
It is important to take a strategic approach to clinical development in order to minimize the potential for Phase 3...
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August 19, 2020
Webinar on Adaptive Designs for Dose Finding: Part 2
Bjoern Bornkamp, Statistical Methodologist at Novartis and Jose Pinheiro, Senior Director, Johnson & Johnson provided...
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August 13, 2020
Webinar: Adaptive Designs for Dose Finding
Bjoern Bornkamp, Statistical Methodologist at Novartis and Jose Pinheiro, Senior Director, Johnson & Johnson provided...
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July 27, 2020
Introduction to Population Enrichment by Dr. Thomas Burnett
Cytel is conducting a webinar series on complex innovative trial designs. Dr. Thomas Burnett, Senior Research Associate...
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July 13, 2020
Interview with Dr. Thomas Burnett on Adaptive Enrichment
Cytel is hosting a complimentary webinar series that introduces biostatisticians and other members of the development...
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July 7, 2020
Overcoming Clinical Development Challenges in Oncology with Innovative
Having its roots in the seminar rooms of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Cytel has a long record of establishing new...
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June 24, 2020
Webinar - Practical Model-based Approaches for Phase I Oncology Trials
Last week, Cytel conducted its third webinar in the new introductory webinar series on Complex Innovative Trial...
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June 15, 2020
Significance of Bayesian Model-Based Approaches in Oncology Trials: An Interview with Dr. Satrajit Roychoudhury
Cytel conducted a webinar with Dr. Satrajit Roychoudhury, Senior Director, Statistical Research and Data Science...
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June 11, 2020
Adaptive Bayesian Methods: The Secret Weapon in COVID-19 Vaccine Development
A recent Cytel panel led by Vice President of Strategic Consulting Natalia Muhlemann evaluated the role that Bayesian...
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June 10, 2020
Group Sequential Designs and Sample Size Re-estimation
Cytel is conducting a webinar series that introduces biostatisticians to some of the more commonly used complex...
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June 1, 2020
Webinar Replay: Innovative Drug Development at a Glance
In a recent interview with Cytel, Zoran Antonijevic, longstanding chair and leader of the DIA Adaptive Design...
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May 29, 2020
Trial Tracker: State of COVID-19 Development (May 2020)
At the close of May 2020, we have about 500 new trials globally but trends in trial design and choice of therapies...
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May 28, 2020
Implications for the Future of Drug Development in Emerging Economies
On May 7, Cytel and Certara conducted a virtual panel discussion on new opportunities and implications for the future...
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May 27, 2020
Group Sequential Designs and Sample Size Re-estimation
In this blog, we speak with Christopher Jennison, Professor of Statistics at the University of Bath, UK. Professor...
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May 18, 2020
Interview with Zoran Antonijevic on Adaptive Design Methods
In this blog, we speak with Zoran Antonijevic, longstanding chair and leader of the DIA Adaptive Design Scientific...
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May 12, 2020
Oncology Trial Design & Development Webinar Series
In our previous blog, “Remote Working Arrangement – How to get it right?”, we talked about how the need for social...
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May 7, 2020
Weekly Insights from the COVID-19 Trial Tracker: Oxford Vacine Study
There are now over 950 trials registered, which means that 250 new trials were registered in the past week. Only 540 of...
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May 7, 2020
COVID-19: Trials, Designs and Tools for Promising Results - A Virtual Panel Discussion
An extraordinary amount of global research is underway as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve and spread...
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April 29, 2020
Webinar: Transparent Machine Learning in Oncology
In our previous blog, we spoke with Alind Gupta, who works as a Machine Learning Researcher at Cytel in Canada. The...
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April 20, 2020
Interview with Alind Gupta: Transparent Machine Learning in Oncology
Cytel is hosting a webinar on Transparent Machine Learning in Oncology, on April 21, 2020. Our speaker, Alind Gupta,...
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April 14, 2020
Early Insights from Cytel’s New COVID-19 Trial Tracker
Last week Cytel launched a COVID-19 Trial Tracker, an Open Access tool to track the global response to the coronavirus...
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March 31, 2020
Key Design Thoughts for Basket Trials and Umbrella Trials by Jay Park
Since 1953, when the discovery of the structure of DNA was made, we have seen great advancements in genomics....
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March 12, 2020
Interview with Jay Park: The present and future of Master Protocols
In September 2018, the FDA provided a draft guidance on master protocols reflecting an increased interest in these...
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January 16, 2020
Adaptive Population Enrichment in a Phase III Oncology Trial
January’s Cytel Trial Design Innovations (CTDI) Webinar Series will feature Biostatistician and pioneering Bayesian...
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November 5, 2019
Drug Development in Rare Diseases - Innovation in Statistical Thinking
Cytel is delighted to have Kannan Natarajan speaking at the “Complex Innovative Trial Design Symposium and East User...
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August 23, 2019
Advancing Medicines Development with External Controls
In place of collecting data from patients recruited for a trial who have been assigned to the control or...
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July 22, 2019
Adaptive Design and Health Economic Analysis: Interview with Laura Flight
Health economics and adaptive design methods share common ground in that they both aim to support more efficient and...
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June 14, 2019
Flipping the paradigm-how should biotechs harness adaptive trials?
This article was originally published as part of a series by pharmaphorum in association with Cytel and is reproduced...
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February 8, 2019
Publication Reveals New Promise for Promising Zone Designs
A 2018 publication in the Biometrical Journal by Cytel’s Cyrus Mehta, Lingyun Liu and Sam Hsiao, ‘Optimal Promising...
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November 5, 2018
New publication addresses critical issues in ultra-orphan indications
Cytel biostatisticians Cyrus Mehta and Lingyun Liu, together with Charles Theuer, CEO of TRACON Pharmaceuticals have...
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September 27, 2018
Decision Making in Development Programs with Targeted Therapies: with Heiko Götte
In this blog, we talk with Heiko Götte, Senior Expert Biostatistician at Merck about his upcoming presentation at...
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May 23, 2018
Addressing Critical Unmet Oncology Needs in the Era of Precision Medicine
Our Industry Voices series showcases our clients’ innovative work and breakthrough therapeutics in oncologic...
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May 16, 2018
Rewriting the oncology textbook with cell-based immunotherapies
Our Industry Voices series showcases our clients’ innovative work and breakthrough therapeutics in oncologic...
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May 9, 2018
Innovative Oncology Trial Designs in Practice
As we prepare to head to ASCO in under a month's time, we are pleased to share a new ebook that showcases some key...
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