Optimal Promising Zone Designs: What Biotechs Need To Know

By Esha Senchaudhuri

Since its first publication ten years ago, Cyrus Mehta and Stuart Pocock’s Promising Zone Design for sample size re-estimation has been the subject of much debate and exploration. The design was initially meant to channel greater resources towards promising but underpowered studies, to ensure that they did not fail due to absence of adequate sample size. Since then, research into the Promising Zone Design has led to further questions about how to optimize such designs, and particularly how biotechs and pharmaceuticals might employ different strategies to achieve such optimization. On November 10, Cyrus Mehta offered a webinar reviewing the methodological evolution that has led to the current state of the debate. So what is the Promising Zone Design?