Adaptive Phase I Clinical Trial — Adaptive Dose-Escalation Design

An adaptive Phase I clinical trial is a first-in-human or early-phase dose-finding study that continuously updates the recommended dose after each patient cohort using a prespecified statistical model, rather than following a fixed rule. The goal is to identify the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) or the recommended Phase II dose (RP2D) efficiently while minimising exposure of participants to sub-therapeutic or toxic doses. Adaptive designs — most notably the Continual Reassessment Method (CRM) — replace or augment traditional rule-based designs such as the 3+3 schema.