Modelling of chemotherapy: The effective dose approach

We sketch the development of the effective dose approach which provides a t heoretical framework to interpret chemotherapy outcome data. Building on th e generalised Skipper model of chemotherapy, a meta-regression method is de rived to jointly analyse all chemotherapy comparing randomised clinical tri als in a given malignancy in order to explore the slope of the effective do se/outcome relationship and the relative potency of cytostatic drugs. The m odel is applied to explain why treatment differences in aggressive NHL appe ar to differ by risk groups in aggressive NHL. A respective meta-subgroup a nalysis to confirm this interaction hypothesis is proposed.