Endpoint

An endpoint is a measure of a primary or secondary outcome of a clinical trial. Endpoints of a clinical trial can be classified as direct/clinical endpoints or surrogate endpoints. A clinically meaningful endpoint that directly measures how a patient, feels, or functions is a clinical endpoint and represents a direct clinical benefit.

Measures of clinical endpoints can include:

  • Disease-Free Survival.
  • Progression-Free Survival.
  • Response Rate.
  • Overall Survival.
  • Quality of Life.

 If the clinical endpoint cannot be feasibly measured, a surrogate endpoint may be used, but will not represent a direct clinical benefit, but acts as a predictive measure for the clinical benefit. For example, blood pressure or cholesterol control may be used as surrogate endpoints for survival.

Surrogate endpoints also offer other advantages:

  • Faster and easier to study.
  • Faster drug development.
  • Cheaper to measure and track.

Source: Clinical Trial Endpoints | Friends of Cancer Research. (n.d.). Friends of Cancer Research. Retrieved January 26, 2022, from https://friendsofcancerresearch.org/clinical-trial-endpoints.