A General Overview of Adaptive Randomization Design for Clinical Trials

Abstract

With the recent release of FDA draft guidance (2010), adaptive designs, including adaptive randomization (e.g. response-adaptive (RA) randomization) has become popular in clinical trials because of its advantages of flexibility and efficiency gains, which also have the significant ethical advantage of assigning fewer patients to treatment arms with inferior outcomes. In this paper, we presented a general overview of adaptive randomization designs for clinical trials, including Bayesian and frequentist approaches as well as response-adaptive randomization. Examples were used to demonstrate the procedure for design parameters calibration and operating characteristics. Both advantages and disadvantages of adaptive randomization were discussed in the summary from practical perspective of clinical trials.