Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31175098›Full record

ArticleClinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research2019

Design and Evaluation of an External Control Arm Using Prior Clinical Trials and Real-World Data.

Steffen Ventz, Albert Lai, Timothy F Cloughesy, Patrick Y Wen, Lorenzo Trippa, Brian M Alexander

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
53citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

53 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Trial
  2. Prospectively shared control data across concurrent randomised clinical trials.European journal of cancer (Oxford, England : 1990) · 2023
    Trial
  3. Trial
  4. Article
  5. Review
  6. Harmonized Estimation of Subgroup-Specific Treatment Effects in Randomized Trials: The Use of External Control Data.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B, Statistical methodology · 2026
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Review
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  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
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  15. Article
  16. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Steffen VentzDepartment of Data Sciences, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. steffen@jimmy.harvard.edu bmalexander@lroc.harvard.edu.
Albert LaiNeuro-Oncology Program, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.
Timothy F CloughesyNeuro-Oncology Program, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.
Patrick Y WenCenter for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Lorenzo TrippaDepartment of Data Sciences, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Brian M AlexanderDana-Farber Program in Regulatory Science, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. steffen@jimmy.harvard.edu bmalexander@lroc.harvard.edu.ORCID 0000-0003-3903-9175

Funding

UCLA SPORE in Brain CancerP50CA211015 · NCI · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · PI David A. Nathanson · 2017 to 2026
$25.2M
NCI NIH HHS L30 CA153334NCI NIH HHS P50 CA211015Wellcome Trust
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposeWe discuss designs and interpretable metrics of bias and statistical efficiency of "externally controlled" trials (ECT) and compare ECT performance to randomized and single-arm designs. EXPERIMENTAL

designWe specify an ECT design that leverages information from real-world data (RWD) and prior clinical trials to reduce bias associated with interstudy variations of the enrolled populations. We then used a collection of clinical studies in glioblastoma (GBM) and RWD from patients treated with the current standard of care to evaluate ECTs. Validation is based on a "leave one out" scheme, with iterative selection of a single-arm from one of the studies, for which we estimate treatment effects using the remaining studies as external control. This produces interpretable and robust estimates on ECT bias and type I errors.

resultsWe developed a model-free approach to evaluate ECTs based on collections of clinical trials and RWD. For GBM, we verified that inflated false positive error rates of standard single-arm trials can be considerably reduced (up to 30%) by using external control data.

conclusionsThe use of ECT designs in GBM, with adjustments for the clinical profiles of the enrolled patients, should be preferred to single-arm studies with fixed efficacy thresholds extracted from published results on the current standard of care.

Indexed as

Clinical Trials as TopicResearch DesignAlgorithmsHumansModels, TheoreticalPrognosisProportional Hazards ModelsRandomized Controlled Trials as TopicTreatment Outcome

Identifiers

PMID31175098
PMCPMC6697596

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.