LiMAP-curvature: a simple model-free approach for analysing dose-finding studies

MCP-Mod (Multiple Comparison Procedure-Modelling) is an efficient statistical method for the analysis of Phase II dose-finding trials, although it requires specialised expertise to pre-specify plausible candidate models along with model parameters. This can be problematic given limited knowledge of the agent/compound being studied, and misspecification of candidate models and model parameters can severely degrade its performance. To circumvent this challenge, in the work, we introduce LiMAP-curvature, a Bayesian model-free approach for the detection of the dose-response signal in Phase II dose-finding trials. LiMAP-curvature is built upon a Bayesian hierarchical framework incorporating information about the total curvature of the dose-response curve. Through extensive simulations, we show that LiMAP-curvature has comparable performance to MCP-Mod if the true underlying dose-response model is included in the candidate model set of MCP-Mod. Otherwise, LiMAP-curvature can achieve performance superior to that of MCP-Mod, especially when the true dose-response model drastically deviates from candidate models in MCP-Mod.