Adapting Health Technology Assessment agency standards for surrogate outcomes in early stage cancer trials: what needs to happen?

Introduction: An avalanche of early stage cancer clinical trials is coming. The majority of these solely use surrogate outcomes that have not been validated against a target outcome of interest (e.g.

The Pathway for New Cancer Drug Access in Canada.

Cancer treatment has evolved significantly over the past decade with the emergence of a multitude of new treatments across cancer types. Alongside the pace of drug discovery, the cost of cancer drugs has also increased. In the face of this growth in development and spending, it is crucial to have an understanding of the processes and pressures new drugs navigate to get to the market in Canada.

Efficiently Simulating an Endograft Deployment: A Methodology for Detailed CFD Analyses.

Numerical models of endografts for the simulation of endovascular aneurysm repair are increasingly important in the improvement of device designs and patient outcomes. Nevertheless, current finite element analysis (FEA) models of complete endograft devices come at a high computational cost, requiring days of runtime, therefore restricting their applicability. In the current study, an efficient FEA model of the Anaconda™ endograft (Terumo Aortic, UK) was developed, able to yield results in just over 4 h, an order of magnitude less than similar models found in the literature.

Analysing The Cross-Section of The Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Neck and Its Effects on Stent Deployment.

Stent graft devices for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) are being increasingly used worldwide. Yet, during modelling and optimization of these devices, as well as in clinical practice, vascular sections are idealized, possibly compromising the effectiveness of the intervention. In this study, we challenge the commonly used approximation of the circular cross-section of the aorta and identify the implications of this approximation to the mechanical assessment of stent grafts.

A Methodology to Quantify the Geometrical Complexity of the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm.

The abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) anatomy influences the technical success of the endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), yet very few data regarding the aortic tree angles exist in the literature. This poses great limitations in the numerical analyses of endografts, constraining their design improvement as well as the identification of their operational limitations. In this study, a matrix Φ of 10 angles was constructed for the description of the pathological region and was implemented on a large dataset of anatomies.