Cytel Blog

In this blog, we talk with Simon Kirby, former Senior Director at Pfizer, about his upcoming presentation at Cytel’s East User Group Meeting on 14th and 15th November at Merck Darmstadt, in Germany. Simon will address the topic of Selection Bias for Treatments with Positive Phase 2 Results and in this blog he explains why this is a key topic of particular relevance for pharmaceutical companies in today’s climate of accelerated development. He also talks with us about his career in statistics, current research, and his book Quantitative Decisions in Drug Development.

We are delighted that Stephen Senn will be joining us at the EUGM on November 14th and 15th in Darmstadt, Germany. In this blog, we sit down for a discussion with Stephen about his career in statistics, his advice for early career statisticians, his upcoming research, and the topic of his presentation at the East User Group Meeting “70 Years Old and Still Here: the Randomized Clinical Trial and its Critics”.

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 strive to improve their decision-making, and what delegates can expect to take away from the presentation.

As part of Cytel's new Trial Innovations Webinar Series, Pat Mitchell, Statistical Science Director at AstraZeneca presented the October webinar "Formal Go/No-Go decisions are a key component of risk management in early clinical development."

 Robust go/no-go (GNG) decision-making is essential for effectively managing risk across a clinical portfolio. In early phase development, it is particularly important to have the correct tools in place to terminate ineffective compounds quickly, while accelerating promising ones through the process. 

 At the recent CMO Summit East  James ( Jim) Bolognese, Cytel’s Senior Director of Strategic Consulting, and Lou Vaickus,MD, FACP, Founder and President of aktaPD jointly explored how the critical connection between a CMO and a biostatistician can help enhance communication with internal and external stakeholders, ensure patient safety and ultimately improve clinical development efficiency.  Below you can catch up with some of the key topics they covered and watch the video of the presentation. 

Cost of pharmaceutical development and R&D productivity is an ongoing industry concern, consistently discussed in the mainstream and specialist press.  The issue is held in delicate balance against the increasing pressure on pharmaceutical pricing and cost containment measures.

A study by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development published earlier this year in the Journal of Health Economics (1) provides new estimates of R&D costs, building on previous work in the area.

Last week Cytel joined forces with Sanofi/Genzyme to devote a full day of workshops and talks related to modern methods in early phase oncology. Patrick Mitchell, an Associate Director of Statistical Sciences at Astra Zeneca, gave this talk on Bayesian go/no-go decision-making in an early phase oncology event study. 

Astra Zeneca recently invited Cytel to take part in a collaborative initiative to develop software for go/no-go decision-making. Pat demonstrates the uses of this proprietary software in early phase oncology.