Bayesian modeling of a bivariate toxicity outcome for early phase oncology trials evaluating dose regimens

Most phase I trials in oncology aim to find the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) based on the occurrence of dose limiting toxicities (DLT). Evaluating the schedule of administration in addition to the dose may improve drug tolerance. Moreover, for some molecules, a bivariate toxicity endpoint may be more appropriate than a single endpoint. However, standard dose‐finding designs do not account for multiple dose regimens and bivariate toxicity endpoint within the same design. In this context, following a phase I motivating trial, we proposed modeling the first type of DLT, cytokine release syndrome, with the entire dose regimen using pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD), whereas the other DLT (DLT(o)) was modeled with the cumulative dose. We developed three approaches to model the joint distribution of DLT, defining it as a bivariate binary outcome from the two toxicity types, under various assumptions about the correlation between toxicities: an independent model, a copula model and a conditional model. Our Bayesian approaches were developed to be applied at the end of the dose‐allocation stage of the trial, once all data, including PK/PD measurements, were available. The approaches were evaluated through an extensive simulation study that showed that they can improve the performance of selecting the true MTD‐regimen compared to the recommendation of the dose‐allocation method implemented. Our joint approaches can also predict the DLT probabilities of new dose regimens that were not tested in the study and could be investigated in further stages of the trial.