Alessio Crippa

About me

I am a postdoctoral researcher in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB) at Karolinska Institutet (KI). I did all my undergraduate studies in Biostatistics at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a part from a six-semester stint at the Stockholm University where I studied Mathematical Statistics, and a six-semester stint at KI where I wrote my master thesis. I also did my Phd at Karolinska Institutet focusing on the development of novel methods for dose-response meta-analysis, with several applications to lifestyle factors and cancer. During my PhD, I spent three months in Boston at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the supervision of Prof. Donna Spiegelman. Since 2018, I work at MEB as postdoctoral researcher, where my research focuses on the design and analysis of modern trials to reduce the prostate cancer mortality by using genetics biomarkers to individualized treatment decision.

Research description

My research focuses on the development of methodologies within modern platform trials, with the aim of improving a personalized treatment decision for prostate cancer patients. I am the responsible for the statistical analysis plan, as well as the unblinded statistician, in the ProBio platform trial. 

ProBio

Approximately 30% of men diagnosed with prostate cancer develop lethal metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Although recently approved new drugs are beneficial for many mCRPC patients they carry three serious disadvantages. First, these drugs are all very expensive. Second, the response rates to these drugs are low, ranging between 20-40%. This leads to suboptimal treatment and unnecessary side-effects. Third, there are no predictive treatment markers available in clinical care today, which leads to ineffective trial-and-error in treatment decisions. Our hypothesis is that treatment decisions based on molecular profiling will significantly increase progression free survival compared to current clinical care. The vast majority of CRPC metastasize to the bone, with low success rate in obtaining sufficient material. Therefore, we will sequence circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) consisting of DNA debris from apoptotic cancer being present at high levels in plasma. This hypothesis will be tested in the ProBio trial starting in the end of 2018, a large, nationwide, multicentre randomized study in men with CRPC. ProBio uses an outcome-adaptive randomization trial design, with the goal to learn as rapidly as possible which treatments are effective for which ctDNA biomarker profiles.

Teaching portfolio

I have been teaching courses in Biostatistics (Basic Statistics and Advanced Statistics in Epidemiology) in the Master program in Public Health at Karolinska Insitutet. I've also been teaching assistant in different courses in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Introduction to Stata, Biostatistics II) in the Doctoral Program in Epidemiology, as well hold different workshops to introduce the statistical software R to public health researchers at Karolinska Institutet and medical doctors at Uppsala Hospital. I regularly have seminars teaching statistical concepts survival analysis for students in the Master of Biostatistics and Experimental Statistics at the University of Milan-Bicocca.

Education

• PhD Medical Science, Karolinska Institutet, 2018
• MSc Biostatistics and Experimental Statistics, University of Milan-Bicocca 2013
• BSc Statistics and Information Management, University of Milan-Bicocca 2011