Trial Talk

Children with community-acquired pneumonia are usually treated with an injectable antibiotic for five days. This often means staying in hospital for the full treatment period, even when they are well enough to go home earlier. The PediCAP trial tested a new approach designed to help children return home sooner while continuing to receive safe and effective care. In this episode, PediCAP team members Julia Bielick, Hilda Mujuru and Michelle Clements discuss why the trial was needed, explain its innovative ROCI trial design, and share the results and what they mean for children, families and healthcare professionals.

 Date of episode recording: 2025-04-01
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
 Guests: Julia Bielick; Hilda Mujuru; Michelle Clements 
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley

ACORD is a pioneering collaboration that brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines to accelerate the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. In this episode, we explore how ACORD works in practice, the innovative methodologies that underpin it, including the multi-arm, multi-stage trial design, and the opportunities it creates for researchers at different stages of their careers. We speak with James Carpenter, one of ACORD’s founders, and Ed Jabbari, an ACORD Fellow, about the vision behind the collaboration, its potential to transform clinical research in neurodegenerative diseases, and how it has shaped Ed’s career journey. 

Further information is available on the ACORD collaboration page at www.innovative-ctu.ucl.ac.uk/. 

At the start of October, lots of the Unit’s clinical trials methodology researchers travelled to Edinburgh, for the 7th International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference (ICTMC). ICTMC is the largest academic-led conference on clinical trials, bringing together trialists from across the globe to present their latest work in trials methodology. This year's conference featured a wide variety of workshops, talks and poster presentations from MRC Clinical Trials Unit researchers. I

n this latest episode of the Trial Talk podcast, four of the Unit’s early career researchers discuss the work they presented at ICTMC 2024. Gideon Darko Asamoah tells us how he will deliver a core outcome set for trials in severe malaria; Jingyi Xuan describes her project addressing intercurrent events in platform trials; Dongquan Bi discusses the effects of different cluster sizes in cluster trials; and finally, Kate Roberts explains how she aims to improve the wording around consent for accessing trial participants' healthcare records.

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at [email protected]
For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/4f9grVi
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More resources:
• Developing a core outcome set for severe malaria trials poster: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/posters/identi…nd-caregivers/
• Specifying estimands and estimators in trials with complex designs poster: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/posters/specif…mplex-designs/
• Demystifying estimands in cluster-randomised trials paper in Statistical Methods in Medical Research: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09622802241254197
• Estimands in cluster-randomised trials paper in International Journal of Epidemiology: academic.oup.com/ije/article/52/1/107/6644521
• Current practice around the use of estimands in cluster randomised trials, and the impact of informative cluster size on inference poster: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/posters/curren…on-inferences/
• ICTMC 2024 Poster 167 – A rap song (Lyrics by Dongquan Bi, beat by David Fitzgerald): youtu.be/s7qZ5TnOlWU?si=iXwfFfSAWwJ-fAmk
• CrossWord poster: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/posters/crossw…ing-materials/

 Date of episode recording: 2024-10-30T00:00:00Z
 Duration: 00:25:09
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter:Charlotte Hartley
 Guests: Gideon Darko Asamoah, Jingyi Xuan, Donguan Bi, Kate Roberts
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley
 

In September 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidance on preventative treatment for tuberculosis (TB). Thanks to new evidence from two randomised controlled clinical trials, the WHO now recommends that contacts of people with multidrug-resistant TB take six months of daily levofloxacin. In this episode of the Trial Talk podcast, we find out more about the TB-CHAMP and VQUIN trials. We also learn how the teams came together to combine their data and strengthen their evidence, using new statistical methodologies developed at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL. The episode features interviews with Anneke Hesseling, Principal Investigator for TB-CHAMP, based at Stellenbosch University, and Trinh Duong, based at the MRC CTU at UCL, the trial statistician for TB-CHAMP and lead for the combined data analysis with VQUIN.

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at [email protected]

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/3XTf8na

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-09-23
Duration: 00:32:50
Language of episode: English
Presenter:  Charlotte Hartley
Guests:   Anneke Hesseling, Trinh Duong
Producer:   Charlotte Hartley

Optimisation immunotherapy clinical trials investigate ways of reducing the intensity of immunotherapy cancer treatment. This could be beneficial for patients’ quality of life. But these trials can be challenging to run, as patients may be concerned about the impact that reducing the intensity of treatment could have on the cancer.

This episode of the Trial Talk podcast focuses on the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL’s OPTIC study, which explores how people with cancer feel about taking part in optimisation immunotherapy trials. Clinical Fellow Sophie Merrick discusses the main barriers that patients face and recommendations to address them.

Resources:
•OPTIC study page: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/studies/all-st…/refine/optic/
•OPTIC results paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41416-024-02756-x.pdf
•REFINE podcast episode: on.soundcloud.com/Fe3C76csHkgCg2or5

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at [email protected]

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/4c9SfAr

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2024-06-18T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:25:23
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Berta Terre-Torras
Guests: Sophie Merrick
Producer: Berta Terre-Torras

The MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is committed to actively involving patients and the public in our trials. All our Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work is overseen by our PPI Group, made up of MRC CTU staff alongside seven patient representatives, with a wide range of experience in different areas. In this episode of the Trial Talk podcast, two members of the Unit’s PPI Group, Richard Stephens and Ian Newsome, discuss what PPI means to them; how they got involved as patient representatives in clinical research; and how the MRC CTU at UCL embeds PPI into our trials.

Resources:
• Our PPI group: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/patients-publi…our-ppi-group/
• PPI resources: www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/patients-publi…ppi-resources/
• Testing Treatments: Better Research for Better Healthcare (book): www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK66204/

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/3KlKtak
For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at [email protected] 
As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. 
Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

 Other details:

 Date of episode recording: 2024-05-29T00:00:00Z
 Duration: 00:34:43
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter:Charlotte Hartley
 Guests: Ian Newsome, Richard Stephens
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley 

An estimand is a description of the research question a trial seeks to answer, which can help researchers better understand how their study should be designed and analysed. Estimands also provide a clear way to communicate treatment effects to different stakeholders. This episode of the Trial Talk podcast features Principal Research Fellow Brennan Kahan, exploring how triallists could benefit from using estimands. Brennan also discusses his recent paper which aims to demystify new guidance on the use of estimands.

Resources:
• The estimands framework: a primer on the ICH E9(R1): www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076316
• 'We must let the research question drive study methods' opinion piece: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9908044/
• Estimands in cluster-randomized trials: choosing analyses that answer the right question: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9908044/

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/4dazsWF

For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at [email protected] 

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

 Date of episode recording: 2024-04-25T00:00:00Z
 Duration: 00:21:29
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
 Guests: Brennan Kahan
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley
 

Clinical trial results usually tell us how effective a treatment was on average for the overall group of participants, but a key question for clinicians, patients and policy makers is: which individual patients benefit most from the treatment and which don’t benefit as much? In the latest episode of the Trial Talk podcast, Peter Godolphin and David Fisher discuss a new method for determining how treatment effects differ between subgroups of patients across multiple clinical trials, as well as how other meta-analysis researchers can use it.

Resources:

• Estimating interactions and subgroup-specific treatment effects in meta-analysis without aggregation bias: A within-trial framework onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jrsm.1590
• Cochrane webinar recording training.cochrane.org/resource/estim…-meta-analysis
• GitHub page for metafloat package in Stata github.com/UCL/metafloat
• WHO REACT Group: IL6 Prospective meta-analysis jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781880
• STOPCAP collaborators: Docetaxel IPD meta-analysis www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/…00230-9/fulltext

For questions about the within-trial framework for subgroup analysis, you can email [email protected] or [email protected].
For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/43boETF
For questions or feedback on the podcast series, message us at [email protected] 
As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

 Date of episode recording: 2024-03-12T00:00:00Z
 Duration: 00:28:44
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Charlotte Hartley
 Guests: Peter Godolphin, David Fisher
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley
 

UKCTOCS (UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening) is one of the largest screening trials in ovarian cancer. More than 200,000 women from England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in it, and it ran for almost two decades. Designing and running such a large and lengthy trial came with its own challenges. In this episode, Professor Usha Menon discusses the key challenges that UKCTOCS faced in its design, conduct an analysis, and how the team addressed them.

Further information is available on the UKCTOCS website at ukctocs.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk

Listen to the episode about the UKCTOCS trial results at bit.ly/48pK94J

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at [email protected] 

For more information and to access the transcript: bit.ly/45XRyWT 

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

Date of episode recording: 2023-11-23T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:26:57
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Berta Terre-Torras
Guests: Usha Menon
Producer: Berta Terre-Torras
 

In the first episode of our new Trial Talk series, Hanif Esmail and Conor Tweed take over the microphones to interview Andrew Nunn and Sarah Meredith, who have both recently retired from the Unit, having spent a combined total of 92 years working in the field of tuberculosis (TB). As we celebrate Andrew and Sarah’s long and accomplished careers, we’ll dive into the history of TB clinical trials and muse on the future of TB research.

For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.mrcctu.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-stories/2024/january/new-podcast-episode-careers-in-tb-clinical-trials

Check out our earlier podcast episodes about TB trials, also featuring Andrew Nunn:
• Trial-talk-podcast – The-stream2-trial-how-should-we-treat-multi-drug-resistant-tuberculosis
• Trial-talk-podcast – Andrew-nunn-talks-medical-statistics-tb-and-algerian-nomads-part-1
• Trial-talk-podcast – Andrew-nunn-talks-medical-statistics-tb-and-algerian-nomads-part-2

For questions or feedback on the series, message us at [email protected]

As a listener, your opinion is very valuable to us. Please help us to improve the podcast in the future by filling in this short survey: forms.office.com/e/PjfjQ5Mn6g

 Date of episode recording: 2024-01-26T00:00:00Z
 Duration: 28:56
 Language of episode: English 
 Presenters: Charlotte Hartley, Hanif Esmail, Conor Tweed
 Guests: Andrew Nunn, Sarah Meredith
 Producer: Charlotte Hartley
 
The Trial Talk podcast explores how our work at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL is improving health in the UK and worldwide. In this new series, we will hear from world-leading experts about the studies we carry out. We delve into trials on cancer, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases, explore how public and patient involvement shapes our work, and discover new ways to run smarter studies.