Bayesian dose regimen assessment in early phase oncology incorporating pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics

Phase I dose‐finding trials in oncology seek to find the maximum tolerated dose of a drug under a specific schedule. Evaluating drug schedules aims at improving treatment safety while maintaining efficacy. However, while we can reasonably assume that toxicity increases with the dose for cytotoxic drugs, the relationship between toxicity and multiple schedules remains elusive. We proposed a Bayesian dose regimen assessment method (DRtox) using pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) to estimate the maximum tolerated dose regimen (MTD‐regimen) at the end of the dose‐escalation stage of a trial. We modeled the binary toxicity via a PD endpoint and estimated the dose regimen toxicity relationship through the integration of a dose regimen PD model and a PD toxicity model. For the first model, we considered nonlinear mixed‐effects models, and for the second one, we proposed the following two Bayesian approaches: a logistic model and a hierarchical model. In an extensive simulation study, the DRtox outperformed traditional designs in terms of proportion of correctly selecting the MTD‐regimen. Moreover, the inclusion of PK/PD information helped provide more precise estimates for the entire dose regimen toxicity curve; therefore the DRtox may recommend alternative untested regimens for expansion cohorts. The DRtox was developed to be applied at the end of the dose‐escalation stage of an ongoing trial for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (NCT03594955) once all toxicity and PK/PD data are collected.