endpoint: Define Endpoints

In TrialSimulator: Clinical Trial Simulator

Define Endpoints

Description

Define one or multiple endpoints. This is a user-friendly wrapper for the class constructor Endpoint$new. Users who are not familiar with the concept of classes may consider using this wrapper directly.

Note that it is users' responsibility to assure that the units of readout of non-tte endpoints, dropout time, and trial duration are consistent.

Usage

endpoint(name, type = c("tte", "non-tte"), readout = NULL, generator, ...)

Arguments

name	character vector. Name(s) of endpoint(s)
type	character vector. Type(s) of endpoint(s) in name. It supports "tte" for time-to-event endpoints, and "non-tte" for all other types of endpoints (e.g., continuous, binary, categorical, or repeated measurement. TrialSimulator will do some verification if an endpoint is of type "tte". However, no special manipulation is done for non-tte endpoints.
readout	numeric vector named by non-tte endpoint(s). readout should be specified for every non-tte endpoint. For example, c(endpoint1 = 6, endpoint2 = 3), which means that it takes 6 and 3 unit time to get readouts of endpoint1 and endpoint2 of a patient since being randomized. For readouts of a longitudinal endpoint being collected at baseline (baseline) and 2 (ep1), 4 (ep2) unit time, its readout can be set as c(baseline = 0, ep1 = 2, ep2 = 4). Error message will be prompted if readout is not named or is not specified for all non-tte endpoint, or it is specified for any tte endpoints. If all endpoints are tte, readout should be its default value NULL.
generator	a RNG function. Its first argument must be n, number of patients. It must return a data frame of n rows. It supports all univariate random number generators, like those in stats, e.g., stats::rnorm, stats::rexp, etc. that with n as the first argument for number of observations. generator could be any custom functions as long as (1) its first argument is n; and (2) it returns a vector of length n or a data frame of n rows. Custom random number generator can return data of more than one endpoint. This is useful when users need to simulate correlated endpoints (e.g., longitudinal endpoints, or PFS/OS). The column names of returned data frame should match to the argument name exactly, but order does not matter. If an endpoint is of type "tte", the custom generator should also return a column as event indicator. The column name of event indicator is <endpoint name>_event. For example, if "pfs" is "tte", then custom generator should return at least two columns "pfs" and "pfs_event". Usually pfs_event can be all 1s if no censoring. For other generators, e.g., TrialSimulator::PiecewiseConstantExponentialRNG and TrialSimulator::CorrelatedPfsAndOs4, the event indicators could take values 0/1 due to the nature of their algorithms. Censoring can also be specified later in trial() through its argument dropout. See ?Trials. Note that if covariates, e.g., biomarker, subgroup, are needed in generating and analyzing trial data, they can and should be defined as endpoints as well.
...	(optional) arguments of generator.

Examples

set.seed(12345)
## Example 1. Generate a time-to-event endpoint.
## Two columns are returned, one for time, one for event (1/0, 0 for
## A built-in RNG function is used to handle piecewise constant exponential
## distribution
risk <- data.frame(
  end_time = c(1, 10, 26.0, 52.0),
  piecewise_risk = c(1, 1.01, 0.381, 0.150) * exp(-3.01)
)

pfs <- endpoint(name = 'pfs', type='tte',
                generator = PiecewiseConstantExponentialRNG,
                risk = risk, endpoint_name = 'pfs')

# run it in R console to display a summary report
# event indicator takes values 0/1
pfs

## Example 2. Generate continuous and binary endpoints using R's built-in
## RNG functions, e.g. rnorm, rexp, rbinom, etc.
ep1 <- endpoint(
         name = 'cd4', type = 'non-tte', generator = rnorm, readout = c(cd4=1),
         mean = 1.2)
ep2 <- endpoint(
         name = 'resp_time', type = 'non-tte', generator = rexp, readout = c(resp_time=0),
         rate = 4.5)
ep3 <- endpoint(
         name = 'orr', type = 'non-tte', readout = c(orr=3), generator = rbinom,
         size = 1, prob = .4)

ep1 # run it in R console. Mean and sd should be comparable to (1.2, 1.0)

ep2 # run it in R console. Median should be comparable to log(2)/4.5 = 0.154

ep3 # run it in R console. Mean and sd should be comparable to 0.4 and 0.49


## Example3: delayed effect
## Use piecewise constant exponential random number generator
## Baseline hazards are piecewise constant
## Hazard ratios are piecewise constant, resulting a delayed effect.
## Note that this example is for explaining the concept of "endpoint".
## Generating endpoint data manually is not the recommended way to use this package.

run <- TRUE

if (!requireNamespace("survminer", quietly = TRUE)) {
  run <- FALSE
  message("Please install 'survminer' to run this example.")
}

if (!requireNamespace("survival", quietly = TRUE)) {
  run <- FALSE
  message("Please install 'survival' to run this example.")
}

if(run){
risk1 <- risk
ep1 <- endpoint(
  name = 'pfs', type='tte',
  generator = PiecewiseConstantExponentialRNG,
  risk=risk1, endpoint_name = 'pfs')

risk2 <- risk1
risk2$hazard_ratio <- c(1, 1, .6, .4)
ep2 <- endpoint(
  name = 'pfs', type='tte',
  generator = PiecewiseConstantExponentialRNG,
  risk=risk2, endpoint_name = 'pfs')

n <- 1000
tte <- rbind(ep1$get_generator()(n), ep2$get_generator()(n))
arm <- rep(0:1, each = n)
dat <- data.frame(tte, arm)
sfit <- survival::survfit(
  survival::Surv(time = pfs, event = pfs_event) ~ arm, dat)

survminer::ggsurvplot(sfit,
           data = dat,
           pval = TRUE,  # Show p-value
           conf.int = TRUE,  # Show confidence intervals
           risk.table = TRUE,  # Add risk table
           palette = c("blue", "red"))


## print summary reports for endpoint objects in console
ep1
ep2

}

## Example 4: generate correlated pfs and os
## See vignette('simulatePfsAndOs')

TrialSimulator documentation built on Nov. 5, 2025, 7:22 p.m.