Lancaster University

Lancaster University is one of the UK’s top universities, consistently highly ranked in the UK league tables and established as a world player in research and teaching as reflected in our rising global league table position. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics hosts one of the largest statistics group in the UK with expertise in a wide range of areas. The group has an active postgraduate and postdoctoral programme, runs an MSc in Statistics and has around fifty PhD students. Mathematical Sciences at Lancaster was ranked fifth in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) overall with 40% of its submissions being world leading.

The Medical Statistics group is dedicated to research in methodology for medical research, to the education of medical statisticians and to the teaching of quantitative methods to medical specialists. The Medical and Pharmaceutical Statistics (MPS) Research Unit which is part of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics develops and evaluates novel statistical methods of study design and data analysis relevant to pharmaceutical companies and medical research institutes. MPS undertakes methodological research, often in direct collaboration with companies and health organisations. Its main areas of research and expertise are statistical methods for dose-finding studies, proof-of-concept studies, adaptive designs for clinical trials and modelling pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics data. Research in these areas has led to extensive experience in dealing with issues of multiplicity and of devising and applying Bayesian approaches to clinical research.

Main research topics: adaptive designs, clinical trial designs, extrapolation in medical research, methods for pediatric studies, multiple testing.

Key Personnel:

Dr. Thomas Jaki
Supervisor: Dose finding for combination trials with many treatments
Co-supervisor: Statistical aspects of animal to human translation
Thomas Jaki is Reader in Statistics and head of the medical statistics group at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He is director of the Medical and Pharmaceutical Statistics Research Unit and a Career development fellow of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). He leads the work-stream on early phase clinical trials of the MRC’s North-West Hub for Trials Methodology Research and the adaptive designs working group of the MRC network of Hubs.

Dr. Lisa Hampson
Supervisor: Using pre-clinical information to establish a safe dose in first-in-men studies
Lisa Hampson is a Lecturer in Statistics and holds an MRC Career Development Award in Biostatistics. Her fellowship research focuses on developing novel approaches for designing early phase trials of new medicines for children, and her broader research interests lie in the design and analysis of clinical trials. She is deputy director of the Medical and Pharmaceutical Statistics Research Unit and co-leads the stream on early phase trial designs of the MRC North-West Hub for Trials Methodology Research (NWHTMR). She is to sit as an external expert on the EMA’s Extrapolation Working Group.

Dr. Andrew Titman
Supervisor: Pooling information on progression-free and overall survival in multi-arm cancer trials
Andrew Titman is a Lecturer in Statistics. His primary research interests are in the analysis of survival and event history data. A particular area of interest is the development of methodology for multi-state models for incomplete or non-standard observation schemes, with application to modelling the progression of chronic diseases. In addition, he also works on projects relating to health economic modelling, diagnostic test evaluation and item response modelling of patient health questionnaires.

IDEAS PhD Projects supervised and located at Lancaster University:

• Project 1: Dose finding for combination trials with many treatments
• Project 2: Pooling information on progression-free and overall survival in multi-arm cancer trials
• Project 3: Using pre-clinical information to establish a safe dose in first-in-men studies