Cure-rate survival models and their application to cancer clinical trials

Abstract

Many patients with cancer can be long-term survivors of their disease and cure models can be a useful tool to analyze and describe cancer clinical trial survival data. This goal of this chapter is to: (i) review what a cure model is, (ii) explain when it can be appropriate to use cure models, and (iii) use cure models to describe multiple myeloma survival trends, including analyses that account for competing risks. This chapter will show that by using cure models, in addition to the standard Cox proportional hazards model, we can evaluate whether there is evidence that some myeloma therapies induce a proportion of patients to be long-term survivors.