Building a Statistics Education Program for Preclinical Cancer Researchers

摘要 在过去的十年中，癌症研究界在描述 人类肿瘤的基因组特征。因此，关于癌症分子驱动因素的知识大大增加了。 尽管肿瘤界希望这将导致更有效的治疗，但我们翻译的能力 实验室癌症研究的临床成功率非常低--只有5%的试剂 在实验室研究中被证明具有抗癌活性，并在第三阶段临床取得成功 审判。许多因素导致了这一令人不安的高失败率，包括误用或 对统计设计和分析概念、解释和报告方法的误解。虽然 这些问题是可以纠正的，在癌症生物医学研究企业中普遍存在。另一个担忧是 统计学培训不是生物医学研究生课程的必修课。认识 鉴于这些问题的严重性，美国国立卫生研究院呼吁 整个生物医学研究企业实施所需的资源，以改善和维持统计 临床前癌症研究的严谨和成功转化。为此，我们建议制定一项统计数字 开展实验室工作的早期临床前癌症研究人员(即博士后研究人员)课程 纪念斯隆·凯特琳癌症中心的研究以及更广泛的研究社区。我们的 建议的课程将在10周内提供，每周一节90分钟的翻转课程 课堂形式，课堂讲稿将在每次课堂接触前一周分发 课堂时间将用于实践活动，包括实验设计、数据分析和 参与性对话。我们将制定一项计划来评估我们提议的课程，并使所有 提供给更广泛的统计和癌症研究社区的资源。

ABSTRACT In the past decade, the cancer research community has made considerable progress in characterizing the genomic features of human tumors. Knowledge of molecular drivers of cancer has therefore increased greatly. Although the oncology community hoped that this would lead to more effective therapies, our ability to translate laboratory cancer research into clinical success has been remarkably low – only 5% of the agents demonstrated to have anticancer activity in laboratory studies went on to achieve success in phase III clinical trials. Many factors are responsible for this disturbingly high percentage of failures, including misuse or misunderstanding of statistical design and analysis concepts, interpretation and reporting methods. Although correctable, these issues are widely prevalent in the cancer biomedical research enterprise. Another concern is that statistics training is not a required component of graduate programs in biomedical sciences. Recognizing the seriousness of these issues, the National Institutes of Health has called for the full engagement of the entire biomedical research enterprise to implement the resources needed to improve and sustain the statistical rigor and successful translation of preclinical cancer research. To this end, we propose to develop a statistics curriculum for early-career preclinical cancer researchers (i.e., postdoctoral researchers) conducting laboratory research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as well as the broader research community. Our proposed curriculum will be delivered over a 10-week period with one 90-minute class per week in a flipped classroom format, where lecture notes will be disseminated one week prior to each classroom contact and classroom time will be dedicated to hands-on activities with experimental designs, data analysis and participatory dialogues. We will develop a plan for evaluating our proposed curriculum and make all the resources available to the broader statistics and cancer research communities.