Wednesday, October 7, 2009
04:30 PM in REC 315
Stephen J. Ruberg PhD
Adjunct Professor of Statistics Purdue University and Senior Research Fellow Eli Lilly & Company

Where’s Waldo
Finding the Right Patients for Drug Therapy

Abstract

The genomics revolution is still in its infancy, and there is much to learn about how and why individual patients respond to different drug treatments in different ways. In addition to genetic mechanisms, there are many clinical markers (disease history, standard laboratory measures, etc.) as well as social/environmental factors (smoking habits, marital status, etc.) that can be used to aid in identifying who may respond or not respond to a particular treatment. This issue has some considerable statistical complexity, and different approaches to the design and analysis of clinical trials may yield more interesting insights into the problem. Several novel approaches or applications of statistical methods will be discussed and real-life examples will be used to demonstrate various aspects of tailoring.