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Led TAX 327, which made docetaxel the first life-extending chemotherapy for prostate cancer, and has spent decades pressing for higher trial standards.
Ian Tannock was principal investigator of TAX 327, the trial showing docetaxel improves survival in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, the first chemotherapy to do so. He co-authored the textbook The Basic Science of Oncology, helped create the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale, and has been a leading critic of trials that rely on surrogate endpoints, control-arm deficiencies and inadequate quality-of-life reporting. He is a founder of Common Sense Oncology.
| Title | Journal | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Docetaxel plus prednisone or mitoxantrone plus prednisone for advanced prostate cancer (TAX 327) | NEJM | 2004 |
| Relevance of randomised controlled trials in oncology | Lancet Oncology | 2016 |
| Prasad: most surrogate endpoints in cancer trials correlate poorly with survival | JAMA Internal Medicine | 2015 |
| FDA's Project Optimus manifesto: cancer drugs are approved at doses that are too high | New England Journal of Medicine | 2021 |
The dose on the label is often not the best dose for patients; it is the highest one that was tolerable for a few weeks. Project Optimus means new cancer drugs should arrive with evidence on dose, and it gives clinicians licence to consider dose reduction for toxicity. For older drugs, the evidence gap persists.
A drug that shrinks tumours or delays progression on scans has not necessarily been shown to help patients live longer or better. Patients and clinicians should ask what the endpoint was; regulators should insist on timely confirmatory trials; and trialists should validate surrogates before relying on them.
The end of therapeutic nihilism in castration-resistant prostate cancer. It is also the trial that set the field's expectation of what a positive result looks like in this disease: a hazard ratio near 0.75 and a median gain measured in months, not years.
Shares Prasad: most surrogate endpoints in cancer trials correlate poorly with survival and the tag evidence.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares Prostate cancer and the tag prostate.
Shares TAX 327: docetaxel plus prednisone or mitoxantrone plus prednisone for advanced prostate cancer, Docetaxel, Prostate cancer.