Staburo @ PSI conference 2023 in London

A couple of weeks ago, from 11th to 14th of June the PSI 2023 was held in Hammersmith, London. The conference is regarded as the principal annual event of the statisticians of the pharmaceutical industry and was therefore fully packed with amazing presentations and high-quality posters. Not only during the social events like the evening in the pub or the gala dinner, but also between sessions there were a lot of opportunities for networking, exchanging ideas and meeting like-minded colleagues.

The conference was also a great chance to meet the two co-chairs of the PSI Biomarker SIG Nicole Krämer (Boehringer Ingelheim) and Guillaume Desachy (Astra Zeneca) as well as many other members of the group.

The PSI Biomarker SIG organized an interactive session dedicated to biomarkers with “From basics to hot topics!” as its motto. The session was divided into three parts covering the three main interests of the SIG. Nicole Krämer represented the Machine Learning substream and talked about “Omics and digital biomarkers: two peas in a pod or two worlds colliding?”. Deepak Parashar (University of Warwick) gave insights into the biomarker-based designs with his presentation on “Trial Designs: Is there hope?”. The data repository substream was represented by Guillaume Desachy and his talk “Who said: a collection of biomarker datasets?”.

We are very happy to be part of the PSI Biomarker SIG and are already looking forward to the next group meetings.

And of course we are already looking forward to the PSI conference 2024 in Amsterdam.

Staburo Summer Party 2023

A few days ago the time had come for our Staburo summer party.

On a late Wednesday afternoon all Staburo employees including families met at the event location Rothof in Munich Bogenhausen.

The day started with mixed weather, but right at the start of our event it was dry, sunny and warm. 

There were many fun activities going on at our event area. Depending on individual preferences all guests had the possibility to play beach volleyball, table tennis, badminton, viking chess and much more. Naturally some fun competitions have been developed during the sports activities. For our youngest guests, the water pistols and water bombs were the most fun.

After some fun and active hours a large and very delicious barbecue buffet was served for everyone – of course including vegetarian options and some tasty dessert. A beach bar with various drinks and music is of course a must at a summer party and was provided at our event area.

As dusk fell, there were still colleagues who were active playing some of our games and other colleagues who enjoyed socializing around the fire bowl.

At the end we look back at a nice, fun and tasty summer party and are happy that so many employees and families joined. It was nice seeing everyone getting involved in different team combinations and connecting with other colleagues.

Staburo contributes to biomarker analysis for colorectal cancer phase 2 study

Staburo regularly contributes to publications in different areas.

Most recently, Staburo supported the analysis of a Phase II Study in patients with Mismatch Repair-Proficient (pMMR)/Microsatellite Stable (MSS) Colorectal Cancer (CRC).

The study was the largest prospective study to date assessing the combination of anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibodies and multikinase inhibitors. This combination has shown encouraging activity in several tumour types, including colorectal cancer. In this study, 5 of 70 treated patients had a partial response, corresponding to an objective response rate of 7%.

The safety profile was manageable and consistent with the known safety profiles of both treatments, except for a higher incidence of grade 3 rash in the study.

Staburo was involved in the biomarker analysis, where tumour samples from 40 patients were analysed by immunohistochemistry. One of the results was that higher expression of biomarkers for pre-existing immune sensitivity (e.g., PD-L1 or CD8) tended to lead to a better clinical outcome.

The paper was published in April 2023 in The Lancet: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.101917

Staburo’s contribution is mentioned in the acknowledgements – special thanks to our colleagues Laura Schlieker and Rebecca Freudling.

Staburo at StaDS@Work – LMU 

We are pleased to announce our participation in the upcoming StaDS@Work event at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU).

Staburo Senior Data Scientist, Stephan Bischofberger, will be presenting at this event. He will share insights on his role, daily tasks, and his experience of statistics and data science within the healthcare sector. Stephan will be accompanied by Staburo working students Maria Blanco and Tim Müller. This is an excellent opportunity to gain insights into the practical implications of biostatistics in a professional context. 

StaDS@Work, short for Statistics and Data Science at Work, is an initiative by the Statistics Student Council (also known as Fachschaft Statistik) at LMU that promotes connections between industry and academia. It invites industry professionals to showcase their roles and share their perspectives of being a statistician or data scientist in the business world. More information about the event and the organizing group can be found on their website.

The presentation is set to take place on June 21st at 18:00 in the Institute of Statistics seminar room, located at Ludwigstraße 33 on the 1st floor and it will also be possible to attend online via this Zoom meeting (Meeting ID: 921 6724 6898, passcode: StaDS@Work). 

We warmly welcome all those interested in broadening their knowledge on how data science and statistics are applied in the clinical research and development area to attend. We at Staburo are eager to share our insights with the students and appreciate the opportunity to introduce ourselves to all attendees. For more details about the event or any queries, please feel free to contact us. 

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Staburo Strategy 2027

Within the last months we renewed and adapted our 2027 strategy. Five years ago, we conducted our first internal strategy workshop with an external consultant to define Staburo’s vision, mission, values, and goals for the future.

Since then, we have grown sustainably, expanded our services further, and successfully completed a broad range of great projects with our clients. The last five years passed quickly, and it was time to get together again for a deeper check and adaptation of our strategy. This year, the strategy workshop took place in three consecutive steps.

First, our Managing Directors (Hannes Buchner, Josef Höfler, Roland Stieger), our Head of Business Unit (Katrin Frank) and our external consultant came together earlier in this year. As preparation, all employees were interviewed about the opportunities, risks, strengths, and areas of development they see for Staburo in the future.

In a second step, a workshop with the entire Staburo management team took place and the strategy, including mission and vision, was broken down to the different business areas.

Finally, we organized a half-day workshop for all employees including a lunch together afterwards. During the employee workshop, the Staburo strategy 2027 and related initiatives have been presented as well as group discussions about the latest topics and trends took place.

In the end, we produced a comprehensive roadmap, including different strategic initiatives and goals for the next years.

Of course, our core purpose did not change over the last years, but we reformulated it in the process to “Excellent data science to improve and save lives.”

We were very happy to get positive feedback and constructive ideas from our colleagues during the workshop and a short evaluation.

We are looking forward to taking the next steps together with our employees, clients, and suppliers!

Staburo Team Picnic 2023

Our Isar Picnic has become a regular team event in recent years. So, the entire team was already looking forward to our relaxed and nice get-together. The weather forecast for our selected day was fresh 10 degrees Celsius and constant rain. Therefore, we spontaneously changed it to an “indoor picnic” and came together in the late afternoon in our office.

Despite the weather we had a fun and relaxing afternoon with delicious food and nice drinks. Since we are continuously growing and still working hybrid, it was a nice occasion for everyone to meet new faces and to socialise.

Thanks everyone for joining our team event and for the good vibes!

Now we are keeping our fingers crossed for our next outdoor summer event.