Clinical and Statistical Considerations in Personalized Medicine explores recent advances related to biomarkers and their translation into clinical development. Leading clinicians, biostatisticians, regulators, commercial professionals, and researchers address the opportunities and challenges in successfully applying biomarkers in drug discovery and preclinical and clinical development. Robust Biomarkers for Drug Development and Disease Treatment The first four chapters discuss biomarker development from a clinical perspective. Coverage ranges from an introduction to biomarkers to advances in RNAi screens, epigenetics, and rare diseases as targets for personalized medicine approaches. Subsequent chapters examine the statistical considerations in applying a personalized medicine approach, including multiplicity in pharmacogenomics. The last chapter assesses the regulatory issues involved in using biomarkers. Improve Patient Care and Reduce Costs and Side Effects Despite the vast amount of literature on biomarkers, there is no comprehensive book that integrates the clinical and statistical components. This book is one of the first to incorporate both the clinical and statistical aspects of biomarkers in the personalized medicine paradigm. Covering a wide spectrum of personalized medicine-related topics, it presents state-of-the-art techniques for advancing the application of biomarkers in drug discovery and development.

Personalized and precision medicine (PPM)—the targeting of therapies according to an individual’s genetic, environmental, or lifestyle characteristics—is becoming an increasingly important approach in health care treatment and prevention. The advancement of PPM is a challenge in traditional clinical, reimbursement, and regulatory landscapes because it is costly to develop and introduces a wide range of scientific, clinical, ethical, and socioeconomic issues. PPM raises a multitude of economic issues, including how information on accurate diagnosis and treatment success will be disseminated and who will bear the cost; changes to physician training to incorporate genetics, probability and statistics, and economic considerations; questions about whether the benefits of PPM will be confined to developed countries or will diffuse to emerging economies with less developed health care systems; the effects of patient heterogeneity on cost-effectiveness analysis; and opportunities for PPM’s growth beyond treatment of acute illness, such as prevention and reversal of chronic conditions. This volume explores the intersection of the scientific, clinical, and economic factors affecting the development of PPM, including its effects on the drug pipeline, on reimbursement of PPM diagnostics and treatments, and on funding of the requisite underlying research; and it examines recent empirical applications of PPM.

Clinical trials are used to elucidate the most appropriate preventive, diagnostic, or treatment options for individuals with a given medical condition. Perhaps the most essential feature of a clinical trial is that it aims to use results based on a limited sample of research participants to see if the intervention is safe and effective or if it is comparable to a comparison treatment. Sample size is a crucial component of any clinical trial. A trial with a small number of research participants is more prone to variability and carries a considerable risk of failing to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given intervention when one really is present. This may occur in phase I (safety and pharmacologic profiles), II (pilot efficacy evaluation), and III (extensive assessment of safety and efficacy) trials. Although phase I and II studies may have smaller sample sizes, they usually have adequate statistical power, which is the committee's definition of a "large" trial. Sometimes a trial with eight participants may have adequate statistical power, statistical power being the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is false. Small Clinical Trials assesses the current methodologies and the appropriate situations for the conduct of clinical trials with small sample sizes. This report assesses the published literature on various strategies such as (1) meta-analysis to combine disparate information from several studies including Bayesian techniques as in the confidence profile method and (2) other alternatives such as assessing therapeutic results in a single treated population (e.g., astronauts) by sequentially measuring whether the intervention is falling above or below a preestablished probability outcome range and meeting predesigned specifications as opposed to incremental improvement.

Data sharing can accelerate new discoveries by avoiding duplicative trials, stimulating new ideas for research, and enabling the maximal scientific knowledge and benefits to be gained from the efforts of clinical trial participants and investigators. At the same time, sharing clinical trial data presents risks, burdens, and challenges. These include the need to protect the privacy and honor the consent of clinical trial participants; safeguard the legitimate economic interests of sponsors; and guard against invalid secondary analyses, which could undermine trust in clinical trials or otherwise harm public health. Sharing Clinical Trial Data presents activities and strategies for the responsible sharing of clinical trial data. With the goal of increasing scientific knowledge to lead to better therapies for patients, this book identifies guiding principles and makes recommendations to maximize the benefits and minimize risks. This report offers guidance on the types of clinical trial data available at different points in the process, the points in the process at which each type of data should be shared, methods for sharing data, what groups should have access to data, and future knowledge and infrastructure needs. Responsible sharing of clinical trial data will allow other investigators to replicate published findings and carry out additional analyses, strengthen the evidence base for regulatory and clinical decisions, and increase the scientific knowledge gained from investments by the funders of clinical trials. The recommendations of Sharing Clinical Trial Data will be useful both now and well into the future as improved sharing of data leads to a stronger evidence base for treatment. This book will be of interest to stakeholders across the spectrum of research-from funders, to researchers, to journals, to physicians, and ultimately, to patients.

Clinical trials are the engine of progress in the development of new drugs and devices for the detection, monitoring, prevention and treatment of cancer. A well conceived, carefully designed and efficiently conducted clinical trial can produce results that change clinical practice overnight, deliver new oncology drugs and diagnostics to the marketplace, and expand the horizon of contemporary thinking about cancer biology. A poorly done trial does little to advance the field or guide clinical practice, consumes precious clinical and financial resources and challenges the validity of the ethical contract between investigators and the volunteers who willingly give their time and effort to benefit future patients. With chapters written by oncologists, researchers, biostatisticians, clinical research administrators, and industry and FDA representatives, Oncology Clinical Trials, provides a comprehensive guide for both early-career and senior oncology investigators into the successful design, conduct and analysis of an oncology clinical trial. Oncology Clinical Trials covers how to formulate a study question, selecting a study population, study design of Phase I, II, and III trials, toxicity monitoring, data analysis and reporting, use of genomics, cost-effectiveness analysis, systemic review and meta-analysis, and many other issues. Many examples of real-life flaws in clinical trials that have been reported in the literature are included throughout. The book discusses clinical trials from start to finish focusing on real-life examples in the development, design and analysis of clinical trials. Oncology Clinical Trials features: A systematic guide to all aspects of the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of clinical trials in oncology Contributions from oncologists, researchers, biostatisticians, clinical research administrators, and industry and FDA representatives Hot topics in oncology trials including multi-arm trials, meta-analysis and adaptive design, use of genomics, and cost-effectiveness analysis Real-life examples from reported clinical trials included throughout

This User’s Guide is a resource for investigators and stakeholders who develop and review observational comparative effectiveness research protocols. It explains how to (1) identify key considerations and best practices for research design; (2) build a protocol based on these standards and best practices; and (3) judge the adequacy and completeness of a protocol. Eleven chapters cover all aspects of research design, including: developing study objectives, defining and refining study questions, addressing the heterogeneity of treatment effect, characterizing exposure, selecting a comparator, defining and measuring outcomes, and identifying optimal data sources. Checklists of guidance and key considerations for protocols are provided at the end of each chapter. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews. More more information, please consult the Agency website: www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov)

Motivated by the explosion of molecular data on humans-particularly data associated with individual patients-and the sense that there are large, as-yet-untapped opportunities to use this data to improve health outcomes, Toward Precision Medicine explores the feasibility and need for "a new taxonomy of human disease based on molecular biology" and develops a potential framework for creating one. The book says that a new data network that integrates emerging research on the molecular makeup of diseases with clinical data on individual patients could drive the development of a more accurate classification of diseases and ultimately enhance diagnosis and treatment. The "new taxonomy" that emerges would define diseases by their underlying molecular causes and other factors in addition to their traditional physical signs and symptoms. The book adds that the new data network could also improve biomedical research by enabling scientists to access patients' information during treatment while still protecting their rights. This would allow the marriage of molecular research and clinical data at the point of care, as opposed to research information continuing to reside primarily in academia. Toward Precision Medicine notes that moving toward individualized medicine requires that researchers and health care providers have access to very large sets of health- and disease-related data linked to individual patients. These data are also critical for developing the information commons, the knowledge network of disease, and ultimately the new taxonomy.