Design of a drug-drug interaction study of vincristine with azole antifungals in pediatric cancer patients using clinical trial simulation

BACKGROUND: The aim of the current work was to perform a clinical trial simulation (CTS) analysis to optimize a drug-drug interaction (DDI) study of vincristine in children who also received azole antifungals, taking into account challenges of conducting clinical trials in this population, and, to provide a motivating example of the application of CTS in the design of pediatric oncology clinical trials.

PROCEDURE: A pharmacokinetic (PK) model for vincristine in children was used to simulate concentration-time profiles. A continuous model for body surface area versus age was defined based on pediatric growth curves. Informative sampling time windows were derived using D-optimal design. The CTS framework was used to different magnitudes of clearance inhibition (10%, 25%, or 40%), sample size (30-500), the impact of missing samples or sampling occasions, and the age distribution, on the power to detect a significant inhibition effect, and in addition, the relative estimation error (REE) of the interaction effect.

RESULTS: A minimum group specific sample size of 38 patients with a total sample size of 150 patients was required to detect a clearance inhibition effect of 40% with 80% power, while in the case of a lower effect of clearance inhibition, a substantially larger sample size was required. However, for the majority of re-estimated drug effects, the inhibition effect could be estimated precisely (REE < 25%) in even smaller sample sizes and with lower effect sizes.

CONCLUSION: This work demonstrated the utility of CTS for the evaluation of PK clinical trial designs in the pediatric oncology population.