On the July 23rd Summer Open House at the W. M. Keck Center at Rutgers, I tried to talk about a new idea in clinical trials that we are trying to implement in ChinaSCINet and SCINetUSA. Let me expand on the idea here and see if I can get a discussion going.
As most of you know, clinical trials have one purpose and that is to show that (an) experimental therap(y)ies is safe and effective compared to the best standard therapy. Clinical trials are not to provide people with free access to the latest experimental therapies. Clinical trials are testing therapies that we don't know is better than existing therapies. That's why the therapies are being tested. Nine times out of ten, the therapy turn out to be less safe and effective than existing therapies.
In order to show that a therapy is effective and safe, the clinical trial must test enough people and compare their response to therapy against a control group, i.e. a group that is receiving the best standard therapy. There is of course variability of responses and changes in neurological status of people with spinal cord injury. Statistical tests must show that the response to the experimental therapy is greater than chance in a control group of people who did not receive the therapy.
Long experience in clinical trials have shown that people’s attitude towards the therapy can make a big difference in the response to the therapy. Even if the therapy doesn’t work, people often will have a good response to the therapy because they believe, want to believe, and may be desperate to believe that the therapy works. So, many people who have gone overseas for experimental therapies often believe that the therapy works, even though objective assessments of their function shows no change.
The beneficial effect of therapy due to belief that a therapy works is called a placebo response. Placebo responses are powerful and well-known in medicine. Simply by telling people that they are taking a powerful pain drug, a sugar pill can relieve pain in over 405 of people. Surgery has an even more powerful placebo effect. To rule out placebo responses, clinical trials must have a control group that is treated with a “placebo” and both the doctors and subjects must be “blinded” as to the treatment that they receive.
By the way, there is an equally powerful negative effect that can come from somebody in authority saying that a condition or treatment is deleterious. Called a nocebo effect, I suspect that probably as many as 50% with incomplete spinal cord injury who could have walked did not because their doctors told them that they will never walk again. In the same way, if you tell subjects in a clinical trial that the therapies they are getting are unlikely to be effective, you can actually have a dampening effect on seeing any positive effect of a therapy.
In order to see statistically significant treatment effects, it is also essential to choose groups of subjects who have similar conditions and are likely to respond to the therapy in the same way. It is important to keep the condition of the clinical trial as similar as possible for everybody. For example, we don’t have to have people in the experimental treatment group or the placebo treatment group to think that they did not get a therapy that works and therefore will not try hard to walk and recover.
The SCINetUSA trial wll test the hypothesis that combination treatment with umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (UCBMC) and lithium is better than UCBMC alone or lithium alone. In order to approve a combination therapy, the FDA require that we show that the combination is better than any of the individual components. Therefore, the trial must include at least lithium alone, UCBMC alone, and the combination UCBMC+lithium. In addition, because we are providing rehabilitation training, we need to have a control group that has only the rehabilitation training, to rule out the possibility that all the recovery resulted from the rehabilitation.
We chose to limit the age and the spinal cord injury levels that will be tested. For example, subjects must be 18-64. The ASIA neurological levels can be from C5 through T10, inclusive. Only traumatic spinal cord injuries will be considered. We will exclude people with other diseases or head injury. Some of these limits are based on safety concerns and others based on trying to get the comparison groups as similar as possible so that their response to therapy will be similar.
The trial obviously cannot include everybody in the study. For example, many people were disappointed at our age cutoff. Many are over 64 and others are under 18. The upper neurological level rules out people with high cervical spinal injuries C4 or greater. We will be studying people who are ASIA A. (complete) The lower neurological level rules out people with lower thoracolumbar injuries. The requirement that the injury is traumatic rules out people with atraumatic spinal cord injury, such as stroke, transverse myelitis, tumor, and other conditions.
So what does being excluded from the main trial mean for people? Will it mean that when the treatment is approved by the FDA, it will not be applicable to people with high quadriplegia or thoracolumbar injuries? Does it mean that the treatment cannot be used for transverse myelitis? Will it mean that the treatment will not be used in children under 18 or adults older than 64? It is true that the FDA approval will usually be given for a therapy for a particular condition. Unless there is evidence to indicate that the treatment is unsafe for certain conditions, the FDA will not usually restrict the therapy for these other conditions.
If the treatment is shown to be effective and the FDA approves it, it is much easier to expand the indication by doing small trials to show that it is safe and feasible to apply it in these other conditions and showing some efficacy. So, that is the route that we have decided to take in SCINetUSA. We are doing a phase 3 trial that is aimed at the majority population, i.e. traumatic spinal cord injury age 18-64, C5 to T10. We will do a parallel phase 3 trial in China that will include ASIA A, B, and C. In addition, we are planning smaller phase II trials that will test the therapy in children (age 8-17), older adults (age 64-80), high quads (C1-C4), thoracolumbar injures (T11-L1), and non-traumatic spinal cord injuries.
If the main SCINetUSA phase 3 trial is successful, i.e. shows that the combination therapy is effective adults with chronic traumatic spinal cord injury, the ChinaSCINet phase 3 trial confirms the results and, in addition, shows that the combination therapy is also effective of incomplete injuries, and the phase 2 trials show that it is safe and feasible to carry out the treatments in children, high quads, thoracolumbar injuries, and non-traumatic spinal cord injuries, then it is likely that the treatment will be applied across the board for everybody. That is the approach that we have decided to take.
Wise.
As most of you know, clinical trials have one purpose and that is to show that (an) experimental therap(y)ies is safe and effective compared to the best standard therapy. Clinical trials are not to provide people with free access to the latest experimental therapies. Clinical trials are testing therapies that we don't know is better than existing therapies. That's why the therapies are being tested. Nine times out of ten, the therapy turn out to be less safe and effective than existing therapies.
In order to show that a therapy is effective and safe, the clinical trial must test enough people and compare their response to therapy against a control group, i.e. a group that is receiving the best standard therapy. There is of course variability of responses and changes in neurological status of people with spinal cord injury. Statistical tests must show that the response to the experimental therapy is greater than chance in a control group of people who did not receive the therapy.
Long experience in clinical trials have shown that people’s attitude towards the therapy can make a big difference in the response to the therapy. Even if the therapy doesn’t work, people often will have a good response to the therapy because they believe, want to believe, and may be desperate to believe that the therapy works. So, many people who have gone overseas for experimental therapies often believe that the therapy works, even though objective assessments of their function shows no change.
The beneficial effect of therapy due to belief that a therapy works is called a placebo response. Placebo responses are powerful and well-known in medicine. Simply by telling people that they are taking a powerful pain drug, a sugar pill can relieve pain in over 405 of people. Surgery has an even more powerful placebo effect. To rule out placebo responses, clinical trials must have a control group that is treated with a “placebo” and both the doctors and subjects must be “blinded” as to the treatment that they receive.
By the way, there is an equally powerful negative effect that can come from somebody in authority saying that a condition or treatment is deleterious. Called a nocebo effect, I suspect that probably as many as 50% with incomplete spinal cord injury who could have walked did not because their doctors told them that they will never walk again. In the same way, if you tell subjects in a clinical trial that the therapies they are getting are unlikely to be effective, you can actually have a dampening effect on seeing any positive effect of a therapy.
In order to see statistically significant treatment effects, it is also essential to choose groups of subjects who have similar conditions and are likely to respond to the therapy in the same way. It is important to keep the condition of the clinical trial as similar as possible for everybody. For example, we don’t have to have people in the experimental treatment group or the placebo treatment group to think that they did not get a therapy that works and therefore will not try hard to walk and recover.
The SCINetUSA trial wll test the hypothesis that combination treatment with umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (UCBMC) and lithium is better than UCBMC alone or lithium alone. In order to approve a combination therapy, the FDA require that we show that the combination is better than any of the individual components. Therefore, the trial must include at least lithium alone, UCBMC alone, and the combination UCBMC+lithium. In addition, because we are providing rehabilitation training, we need to have a control group that has only the rehabilitation training, to rule out the possibility that all the recovery resulted from the rehabilitation.
We chose to limit the age and the spinal cord injury levels that will be tested. For example, subjects must be 18-64. The ASIA neurological levels can be from C5 through T10, inclusive. Only traumatic spinal cord injuries will be considered. We will exclude people with other diseases or head injury. Some of these limits are based on safety concerns and others based on trying to get the comparison groups as similar as possible so that their response to therapy will be similar.
The trial obviously cannot include everybody in the study. For example, many people were disappointed at our age cutoff. Many are over 64 and others are under 18. The upper neurological level rules out people with high cervical spinal injuries C4 or greater. We will be studying people who are ASIA A. (complete) The lower neurological level rules out people with lower thoracolumbar injuries. The requirement that the injury is traumatic rules out people with atraumatic spinal cord injury, such as stroke, transverse myelitis, tumor, and other conditions.
So what does being excluded from the main trial mean for people? Will it mean that when the treatment is approved by the FDA, it will not be applicable to people with high quadriplegia or thoracolumbar injuries? Does it mean that the treatment cannot be used for transverse myelitis? Will it mean that the treatment will not be used in children under 18 or adults older than 64? It is true that the FDA approval will usually be given for a therapy for a particular condition. Unless there is evidence to indicate that the treatment is unsafe for certain conditions, the FDA will not usually restrict the therapy for these other conditions.
If the treatment is shown to be effective and the FDA approves it, it is much easier to expand the indication by doing small trials to show that it is safe and feasible to apply it in these other conditions and showing some efficacy. So, that is the route that we have decided to take in SCINetUSA. We are doing a phase 3 trial that is aimed at the majority population, i.e. traumatic spinal cord injury age 18-64, C5 to T10. We will do a parallel phase 3 trial in China that will include ASIA A, B, and C. In addition, we are planning smaller phase II trials that will test the therapy in children (age 8-17), older adults (age 64-80), high quads (C1-C4), thoracolumbar injures (T11-L1), and non-traumatic spinal cord injuries.
If the main SCINetUSA phase 3 trial is successful, i.e. shows that the combination therapy is effective adults with chronic traumatic spinal cord injury, the ChinaSCINet phase 3 trial confirms the results and, in addition, shows that the combination therapy is also effective of incomplete injuries, and the phase 2 trials show that it is safe and feasible to carry out the treatments in children, high quads, thoracolumbar injuries, and non-traumatic spinal cord injuries, then it is likely that the treatment will be applied across the board for everybody. That is the approach that we have decided to take.
Wise.
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