Cytel Blog

PhUSE EU Connect 2018 took place in Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, 4th - 7th November and brought together a range of experts to tackle the most pressing issues facing statistical programmers today. The agenda was superb with 143 presentations in 16 different streams and nearly 30 posters. This year’s event theme ‘Future Forward’ did not disappoint and there were some very thought-provoking talks on the drug development industry's challenges and  what we can do in the future to meet these challenges. Additional hot topics were: Analytical Risk Based Monitoring, Machine Learning, and Data Standards and Governance. We found this year's event informative and well attended. 

In this blog, we share the contributed posters and presentations from our Statistical Programmers and summarize some of the particular highlights from the sessions and posters that our team members attended.

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 its tools are cleaned. This assessment could have a big impact on the final outcome regardless of the quality of the food served in the restaurant .... the state of the kitchen and its cleanliness influences Borghese’s faith in the chef’s work.

This is exactly what could happen in a data submission to health authorities such as the FDA: the efficacy and safety of your drug are of course what matter, but lack of traceability, or poor or insufficient documentation might trigger questions and concerns from the reviewer. While this might not impact the overall final outcome of your submission, approval could be delayed if the reviewer starts questioning what you have done by requesting changes, or new deliverables to clarify the aspects that were not sufficiently clear in your original submission.

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 This follows the release earlier in August of a draft guidance (2) to help advance effective and innovative clinical trial designs early in drug development that can expedite new cancer therapies.

PhUSE 2017 took place in Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh, 8th - 11th October, and brought together a range of experts to tackle the most pressing issues facing statistical programmers today.  We found this year's event informative and well attended. In this blog we share some highlights from the sessions and posters the Cytel team attended.  We will share Cytel's own contributions in a separate article.

In this blog, we share the second part of our interview with Bob Beckman, about a design concept for a confirmatory basket trial. Beckman is Professor of Oncology and of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Biomathematics at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Innovation Center of Biomedical Informatics, Georgetown University Medical Center. The first part of the interview, which focuses on the context of the design is available to read here.  Otherwise, read on to learn more details about this innovative design which has the potential to drastically increase drug development efficiency. Beckman presented on this topic at Cytel's East User Group Meeting in October.

The ASA Biopharmaceutical Section Regulatory-Industry Statistics Workshop is sponsored by the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section in cooperation with the FDA Statistical Association. Each year 800 statistical practitioners come together to absorb new information on statistical practices in all areas regulated by the FDA.

Cytel was honored to be involved in the workshop program, and our subject matter experts added value to the conference by sharing their academic and regulatory experiences.

Don’t worry if you missed the event!

In this blog, we share the full slide set slide from Cytel contributions at the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section Regulatory Industry Statistics Workshop.

Once upon a time Hansel and Gretel laid a trail of breadcrumbs which they followed to find their way back home.  Their story can be an allegory for the concept of traceability in clinical data where we need to  lay a clear path to ensure that the results we have created can be reproduced. This blog looks at some aspects of a presentation Lost in Traceability  by Angelo Tinazzi at the CDISC EU Interchange. 

Last week was the CDISC EU Interchange conference in Vienna, a key event on the calendar for Cytel’s statistical programming subject matter experts . Angelo Tinazzi, Director, Statistical Programming, Clinical Data Standards and Clinical Data Submission at Cytel co-chaired the sessions on Foundational Standards and Standards Governance alongside Astrazeneca’s Daniel Graham, and delivered a presentation on Traceability within the Foundational standards track.

In this blog, Angelo highlights some of the hot topics which emerged from the presentations he attended during the meeting. 

We continue our series of blogs covering the expert presentations from the EAST User Group Meeting. Consultant Claire Watkins of Clarostat provided a different statistical focus, moving the discussion to a later point in the product lifecycle and the area of Health Technology Assessment.  Her presentation, which tackled the topic of Adjusting Overall Survival for Treatment switch, shared the recommendations of a cross-institutional statistical working group ( Sub team of the PSI HTA Special Interest Group). 

Statisticians have crucial role to play in the area of health economics and health technology assessments since payers like regulators require submissions which are robust and evidence based.  However there are key differences in the perspectives of regulators and HTA agencies posing different challenges for statisticians involved in such submissions.