The Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics welcomes Qiang Zhang, PhD, Senior Statistician, NRG Oncology Statistics and Data Management Center, who will present "Comparison of Futility Monitoring Guidelines Using Completed Phase III Oncology Trials."

 

Futility (inefficacy) interim monitoring is an important component in the conduct of phase III clinical trials, especially in life-threatening diseases. The most common approaches are based on conditional power, sequential testing of the alternative hypothesis, or sequential confidence intervals. The resulting futility boundaries vary considerably with respect to the level of evidence required for recommending stopping the study. Dr. Zhang evaluates the performance of commonly used methods using event histories from completed phase III clinical trials of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, Cancer and Leukemia Group B, and North Central Cancer Treatment Group. His results show the newly proposed linear inefficacy boundary futility approach is attractive from statistical, clinical, and logistical standpoints in clinical trials evaluating new anti-cancer agents.