Covariate-adjusted response-adaptive designs based on semiparametric approaches.

Abstract

We consider theoretical and practical issues for innovatively using a large number of covariates in clinical trials to achieve various design objectives without model misspecification. Specifically, we propose a new family of semiparametric covariate-adjusted response-adaptive randomization (CARA) designs and we use the target maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE) to analyze the correlated data from CARA designs. Our approach can flexibly achieve multiple objectives and correctly incorporate the effect of a large number of covariates on the responses without model misspecification. We also obtain the consistency and asymptotic normality of the target parameters, allocation probabilities, and allocation proportions. Numerical studies demonstrate that our approach has advantages over existing approaches, even when the data-generating distribution iscomplicated.