Alice Li first authored paper published by Hematological Oncology

Alice Li and Jasper Dhanraj, MBiotech students, Dr. Jayson Parker Supervisor, published in Hematological Oncology Clinical trial risk in leukemia: Biomarkers and trial design

The vast majority of new drugs tested in cancer fail.  Sometimes these failures have to do with poor clinical trial designs are targeting the wrong patient populations. Using biomarkers to identify patients likely to respond to a particular therapy, have been used with varying degrees of success.

Purpose:  To identify clinical trial design strategies, in combination with biomarkers, that reduce the risk of failure for new drugs in leukaemia during clinical trial testing.

Methods:  Drug trials were pulled from a publicly available National Institute of Health database and analyzed.

Biomarkers use to target identify patients that were likely responders to new drugs for leukaemia, on average increased success rates by 3 or 7 fold, depending on the leukaemia subtype.  Drugs that acted through enzyme inhibition also had 2 the success rates of other drugs, that did not share such a mechanism of action. These findings may help researchers design clinical trials for new drugs to treat leukaemia, that will reduce the risk of failure by targeting patients who are likely responders to the medication.