Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty Member

Clement Ma

Research Interests

Dr. Clement Ma is the Scientific Head of the Biostatistics Core Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).  He is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He completed his Ph.D. and post-doctoral training in Biostatistics at the University of Michigan in 2015. He was the Lead Biostatistician at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School from 2015 to 2020.

Dr. Ma’s research focuses on developing and implementing innovative statistical methods to improve the accuracy and efficiency of clinical trials. Previously in pediatric oncology, he developed the novel Bayesian adaptive TARGETed-agent Continual Reassessment Method (TARGET-CRM) to prioritize the enrollment of children with specific rare tumour mutations who were more likely to benefit from the molecularly-targeted therapy. He also developed the two-stage subgroup-specific time-to-event (2S-Sub-TITE) design for phase 1 trials with two or more heterogeneous patient subgroups. In collaboration with clinician-scientists, he implemented both designs in three ongoing pediatric cancer trials. At CAMH, Dr. Ma is developing new statistical methods to design and conduct mental health trials that maximize accuracy while minimizing patient resources and trial duration.

Dr. Ma has extensive experience in statistical consulting in clinical research. He previously served as the lead statistician for 10 prospective clinical trials of experimental therapies. He developed the first-ever prognostic risk classification system for NUT carcinoma, an aggressive head & neck cancer, using data from a rare disease registry. He is experienced in the design and analysis of retrospective and survey studies assessing health disparities and quality of life. He also led the meta-analysis of DNA sequencing data from international genetic association studies of type 2 diabetes.  At CAMH, Dr. Ma collaborates closely with clinician-scientists in clinical research studies of mental health and addiction.

Education and Training

• Post-doctoral research fellow in Biostatistics, University of Michigan, 2015
• Ph.D. in Biostatistics, University of Michigan, 2014
• M.Sc. in Biostatistics, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 2007
• B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science (Biomedical Engineering), University of Toronto, 2006

Representative Publications

1. Ma C, Lee A, Courtney D, Castle D, Wang W. Comparing analytical strategies for balancing site-level characteristics in stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials: a simulation study. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2023 Sep 12;23(1):206. doi: 10.1186/s12874-023-02027-y. PMID: 37700232; PMCID: PMC10496299.
2. Sockalingam S, Leung SE, Ma C, Tomlinson G, Hawa R, Wnuk S, Jackson T, Urbach D, Okrainec A, Brown J, Sandre D, Cassin SE. Efficacy of Telephone-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Weight Loss, Disordered Eating, and Psychological Distress After Bariatric Surgery: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 2023 Aug 1;6(8):e2327099. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.27099. PMID: 37535357; PMCID: PMC10401302.
3. McGovern A, Chapple AG, Ma C. Two-stage subgroup-specific time-to-event (2S-Sub-TITE): An adaptive two-stage time-to-toxicity design for subgroup-specific dose finding in phase I oncology trials. Pharm Stat. 2022 Nov;21(6):1138-1148. doi: 10.1002/pst.2231. Epub 2022 May 12. PMID: 35560864.
4. Bidzinski KK, Lowe DJE, Sanches M, Sorkhou M, Boileau I, Kiang M, Blumberger DM, Remington G, Ma C, Castle DJ, Rabin RA, George TP. Investigating repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on cannabis use and cognition in people with schizophrenia. NPJ Schizophr. 2022 Feb 24;8(1):2. doi: 10.1038/s41537-022-00210-6. PMID: 35210458.
5. Shimano KA, Grace RF, Despotovic JM, Neufeld EJ, Klaassen RJ, Bennett CM, Ma C, London WB, Neunert C. Phase 3 randomised trial of eltrombopag versus standard first-line pharmacological management for newly diagnosed immune thrombocytopaenia (ITP) in children: study protocol. BMJ Open. 2021 Aug 27;11(8):e044885. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-044885. PMID: 34452956; PMCID: PMC8404450.
6. Shulman DS, Kiwinda LV, Edwards S, Clinton CM, Hunt S, Greenspan L, Lawler KD, Reaman G, Al-Sayegh H, Bona K, O’Neill AF, Shusterman S, Janeway KA, Place AE, Chi SN, Ma C, DuBois SG. Retrospective evaluation of single patient investigational new drug (IND) requests in pediatric oncology. Cancer Med. 2021 Mar 9;10(7):2310–8. doi: 10.1002/cam4.3791. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33751835; PMCID: PMC7982629.
7. Ma C, Sridharan M, Al-Sayegh H, Li A, Guo D, Auclair M, Kuragayala V, Bandaru C, Milne D, Cruse H, Beaudoin R, Orechia J, Bickel J, London WB. Building a Harmonized Datamart by Integrating Cross-Institutional Systems of Clinical, Outcome, and Genomic Data: The Pediatric Patient Informatics Platform (PPIP). JCO Clin Cancer Inform. 2021 Feb;5:202-215. doi: 10.1200/CCI.20.00083. PMID: 33591797.
8. Nader JH, Neel DV, Shulman DS, Ma C, Bourgeois F, DuBois SG. Landscape of phase 1 clinical trials for minors with cancer in the United States. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2020 Nov;67(11):e28694. doi: 10.1002/pbc.28694. Epub 2020 Sep 4. PMID: 32886429; PMCID: PMC7896417.
9. Chau NG*, Ma C*, Danga K, Al-Sayegh H, Nardi V, Barrette R, Lathan CS, DuBois SG, Haddad RI, Shapiro GI, Sallan SE, Dhar A, Nelson JJ, French CA. An Anatomical Site and Genetic-Based Prognostic Model for Patients With Nuclear Protein in Testis (NUT) Midline Carcinoma: Analysis of 124 Patients. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2019 Nov 6;4(2):pkz094. doi: 10.1093/jncics/pkz094. PMID: 32328562; PMCID: PMC7165803.
10. Fuchsberger C, Flannick J, Teslovich TM, Mahajan A, Agarwala V, Gaulton KJ, Ma C, et al. The genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes. Nature. 2016 Aug 4;536(7614):41-47. doi: 10.1038/nature18642. Epub 2016 Jul 11. PMID: 27398621; PMCID: PMC5034897.
11. Ma C, Boehnke M, Lee S; GoT2D Investigators. Evaluating the Calibration and Power of Three Gene-Based Association Tests of Rare Variants for the X Chromosome. Genet Epidemiol. 2015 Nov;39(7):499-508. doi: 10.1002/gepi.21935. Epub 2015 Oct 10. PMID: 26454253; PMCID: PMC4609297.
12. Ma C, Blackwell T, Boehnke M, Scott LJ; GoT2D investigators. Recommended joint and meta-analysis strategies for case-control association testing of single low-count variants. Genet Epidemiol. 2013 Sep;37(6):539-50. doi: 10.1002/gepi.21742. Epub 2013 Jun 20. PMID: 23788246; PMCID: PMC4049324.
13. Ma C, Bandukwala S, Burman D, Bryson J, Seccareccia D, Banerjee S, Myers J, Rodin G, Dudgeon D, Zimmermann C. Interconversion of three measures of performance status: an empirical analysis. Eur J Cancer. 2010 Dec;46(18):3175-83. doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2010.06.126. Epub 2010 Jul 30. PMID: 20674334.