Improving Survival for Men with Prostate Cancer by Improving Clinical Trials and Meta-Analyses

Date of Lecture: 3 November 2022 About the Lecture: Randomised clinical trials are the cornerstone of evidence-based medicine. Professor Parmar will present how the design of the randomised clinical trial has been changed to improve outcomes for patients more quickly. This will be exemplified throughout by the STAMPEDE trial. The trial was started in 2005 when men with metastatic prostate cancer had an expected survival of approximately 3 years and no new effective treatments had been identified for over 40 years. Over the subsequent 17 years, through the STAMPEDE trial (together with other contemporaneous trials) the expected survival period has grown to 7 years, testing and introducing 4 new treatments for men with this disease. Professor Parmar will show how this model is being applied worldwide to many diseases including neurodegenerative diseases such as motor neuron disease, progressive multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease and dementia where the outcomes for patients are poor and little or no progress has been made for decades. About the Speaker: Max Parmar is a Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology and Director of both the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL and the Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology at University College London.