Genomic Alteration-Driven Clinical Trial Designs in Oncology

Abstract

The established molecular heterogeneity of human cancers necessitates the development of new paradigms to serve as a reliable basis for precision medicine. The assumptions underlying some of the conventional approaches to clinical trial design and analysis are no longer appropriate because of the molecular heterogeneity of tumors of a given primary site. This article reviews some clinical trial designs that have been actively applied in the codevelopment of therapeutics and predictive biomarkers to inform their use in oncology. These include the enrichment design, the basket design, and the umbrella design. Oncology leads most other therapeutic areas in development of personalized or precision medicine. Personalized or precision medicine is practiced daily in oncology on the basis of tumor genomics and may evolve in other therapeutic areas as it has in oncology, rather than according to inherited polymorphisms as so often imagined. Consequently, some of the clinical trial designs described here may serve as a possible blueprint for therapeutic development in fields other than oncology.