PhD Scholarship: Meta-Analysis of Rare Adverse Event Data

The project:
Many adverse events such as pneumonitis with EGFR and immune-oncology treatments, and liver toxicity with targeted agents and immune-oncology occur at very low rates. Meta analyses are used to increase the number of observations, however low event rate can still be an issue, e.g. the meta-analysis of cardiovascular events from drugs using random effects models.
The aims of this project are to increase our ability to understand rare adverse events caused by drugs through the application of multi-scale mathematical modelling and statistical methodologies that can be applied to better detect the rate at which such events occur and to propose best practice in analysing rare adverse events in clinical studies.

The expectations are that through a combined modelling/statistical approach it will be possible to more readily determine the incidence of rare events compared to background levels which can be used for go/no-go guidance at the early and late stages of drug development and to differentiate specific drugs from other drugs of the same class.

This project will be performed in collaboration with the Clinical Pharmacology Group within AstraZeneca based at Cambridge and will include time spent with the company during the PhD.