Utilization of model-based meta-analysis to delineate the net efficacy of taspoglutide from the response of placebo in clinical trials

The objective of this study was to develop quantitative models to delineate the net efficacy of taspoglutide on fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) from the response of placebo in type 2 diabetes patients, and further find pharmacodynamic potency of taspoglutide and FPG for half of maximum reduction responses of FPG and HbA1c, respectively. Several PD data about taspoglutide treatments for type 2 diabetes patients were digitalized from the published papers related with the clinical development of taspoglutide. The model based meta-analysis (MBMA) studies for FPG and HbA1c were performed with Monolix 4.2 software. The MBMA successfully described the effects of placebo and taspoglutide on pharmacological indexes of FPG and HbA1c through mono and multiple combination therapies in clinical trials. The pharmacodynamic potency (25.3 pmol/l) produced 50% of maximum responses of FPG (−2.39 mmol/l) from the responses of placebo for FPG (−0.371 mmol/l); the response change of FPG (−1.81 mmol/l) affected 50% of maximum response change (−1.74%) for HbA1c from the response of placebo (−0.253%). The leveraging prior knowledge from the longitudinal MBMA will be utilized to guide clinical development of taspoglutide and further support study designs including optimization of dose and duration of therapy.