Meeting Calendar

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4/25/2025 (virtual seminar)

Time: Friday 1:30-2:45pm 

zoom link: https://jh.zoom.us/j/91368332943 

Title: Bayesian optimality of testing procedures for survival data in the nonproportional hazards setting

Speaker: Assistant Attending Biostatistician, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Discussant/Visitor: Yingying Wei, Associate Professor,  Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract: Most statistical tests for treatment effects used in randomized clinical trials with survival outcomes are based on the proportional hazards assumption, which often fails in practice. Data from early exploratory studies may provide evidence of nonproportional hazards, which can guide the choice of alternative tests in the design of practice-changing confirmatory trials. We developed a test to detect treatment effects in a late-stage trial, which accounts for the deviations from proportional hazards suggested by early-stage data. Conditional on early-stage data, among all tests that control the frequentist Type I error rate at a fixed α level, our testing procedure maximizes the Bayesian predictive probability that the study will demonstrate the efficacy of the experimental treatment. Hence, the proposed test provides a useful benchmark for other tests commonly used in the presence of nonproportional hazards, for example, weighted log-rank tests. We illustrate this approach in simulations based on data from a published cancer immunotherapy phase III trial. 

(Joint work with Lorenzo Trippa and Brian Alexander at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)