November 18th-19th 2013

Following on from their successful Bristol conference held in 2011, which attracted over 450 delegates, the Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research (HTMR Network) is preparing to welcome up to 800 delegates to Edinburgh.

The second Clinical Trials Methodology Conference, to be held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on 18 and 19 November 2013, will provide a forum for the exchange of new ideas amongst all individuals with an interest in clinical trials.

The conference themes will include trial recruitment and retention, trial conduct, adaptive trial designs, stratified medicine, trial outcomes, and evidence synthesis.

This conference is supported by the HTMR Network. The Hubs were established by the Medical Research Council to create a UK-wide regionally distributed research resource to improve the design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of clinical trials.

The eight Hubs have a variety of methodological expertise and close links with clinical trials units and other methodological groups in universities, industry and relevant professional bodies and organisations. The Hubs were linked together to enhance their individual activities, strengthen the methodological research further, and aid dissemination and education relating to good methods in clinical trials.

The MRC Biostatistics Hub for Trials Methodology Research based in Cambridge is part of this network, and Adrian Mander, its director, is also a member of the conference Scientific Committee and will be chairing the Session “Current Issues: Adaptive clinical trials” on Monday 18th Nov.

Scientists from the MRC Biostatistics Unit (MRC BSU) and linked to the MRC Biostatistics Hub will be giving talks on different sessions:

Statistical analysis: Techniques to increase trial efficiency. Chair: Gordon Murray

• James Wason: “Using continuous data on tumour measurements to improve inference in phase II cancer studies”.
• Martin Law: “Comparing active treatments at Phase II: Using multiple criteria to find the optimal treatment to take forward to Phase III”.

Translational research: Making the process more efficient. Chair: Peter Sandercock

• Simon Bond: “Adaptive dose-finding designs to identify multiple doses that achieve multiple response targets”.

Choosing interventions: Difficult decisions. Chair: Peter Davidson

• Deepak Parashar: “Adaptive Enrichment in biomarker-stratified clinical trial design”.