Multi-arm multi-stage survival trial design with arm-specific stopping rule

Music City Center 

Traditional two-arm randomized trial designs have played a pivotal role in
establishing the efficacy of medical interventions. However, their efficiency is
often compromised when confronted with multiple experimental treatments
or limited resources. In response to these challenges, the multi-arm multi-stage
designs have emerged, enabling the simultaneous evaluation of multiple
treatments within a single trial. In such an approach, if an arm meets
efficacy success criteria at an interim stage, the whole trial stops and the arm
is selected for further study. However when multiple treatment arms are
active, stopping the trial at the moment one arm achieves success diminishes
the probability of selecting the best arm. To address this issue, we have
developed a group sequential multi-arm multi-stage survival trial design
with an arm-specific stopping rule. The proposed method controls the
familywise type I error in a strong sense and selects the best promising
treatment arm with a high probability.

Multi-arm multi-stage

group sequential design

log-rank test

sequential conditional probability ratio test

time-to-event 

International Chinese Statistical Association