Dr. Zaks on Patient-Reported Symptom Assessments

Tal Zaks, MD, PhD, vice president and head of development at Sanofi Oncology, discusses patient-reported symptom assessment in the phase III JAKARTA trial of SAR302503 for myelofibrosis.

The benefit of patient-reported symptom assessment is self-evident, Zaks said. When designing a treatment that alleviates patient symptoms, the best way to know if it's working is by asking the patient if they're feeling better. Patient-reported assessments are not trivial: Zaks said the research team had to build good questions specifically for myelofibrosis that have since been validated by the regulatory authorities.

The idea to capture patient symptoms in real-time without a clinician will make it a powerful tool to demonstrate a difference in symptoms.