Scientific Sessions in Detail »  Phase II Trials

Session: Phase II Trials

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies trying to limit the cost of drug development attempt to progress rapidly through late-phase exploratory development in order to start Phase III "confirmatory" trials as rapidly as possible.  It is hypothesised that this results in decisions being made about which products to progress to large and expensive Phase III trials and decisions on how to design these trials that are ill-informed.  In fact, there is a myriad of questions to try to address in Phase II "exploratory" trials, including the quantification of dose-response, dose selection, preliminary estimates of efficacy and safety to inform the "go / no-go" decision and the design of Phase III trials.  The data generated to inform these decisions is frequently imprecise because of the size, scope and methodology of the prevailing exploratory development paradigm. 

Aims

- discuss the aims of late-phase exploratory trials

- present different possible designs for this type of trial

- introduce methodologies available to quantitatively compare different possible designs

Oral Presentations

Click on the links below to view the presentations.

Identifying appropriate phase II trial designs

Design choice for small-scale phase II trials with non-inferiority (NI) intention

TO-PARP - CRUK/11/029 Olaparib in castration resistant prostate cancer adaptive phase II design

A Bayesian dose-finding procedure applied to a seamless Phase I/II trial in rheumatoid arthritis