Research Interests

Design of Phase I clinical trials for combinations of chemotherapeutic agents, as well as analysis of immune response assays in cancer immunotherapy trials.

Extended Model-based Designs for Complex Phase I Clinical Trials

My research efforts focus on the design of Phase I clinical trials for combination therapies. These trials are becoming increasingly common in cancer research. While there exist many proposed methods for single-agent trials, there are relatively few options for designing Phase I trials of combined drugs. Without adequate statistical methods, potentially effective combinations may be discarded as too toxic, or get tested in subsequent studies at inappropriate levels. Designing dose-finding trials for combinations is an example of a more complex dose-finding problem where extended model-based designs can be applied. Other examples include subject heterogeneity and different treatment schedules. Rather than working with a single model, these problems require designs that make use of several models and model selection techniques, in order to provide greater flexibility and the ability to deal with more complexity.