Surrogate end-points for clinical trials in renal transplantation

Clinical trials are carried out to develop therapies that are best for our patients. Most clinicians would agree that the best therapies are those that have the greatest efficacy and the least toxicity, i.e. those that have the highest benefitto-risk ratios. End-points in clinical trials are clearly defined events or measurements that reflect the efficacy and/or toxicity of therapy; they generally need to be understandable and reproducible and must occur frequently enough to allow therapy to be tested in a reasonably small number of patients over a relatively short period of time to make a clinical trial feasible.