OnCo
ideasIdea

A permanent platform trial for supportive-care interventions inside cooperative groups

Instead of one-off small studies, run a standing trial that continuously tests new treatments for side-effects, adding and dropping arms as evidence arrives.

Supportive-care trials are typically small, single-question and slow. Platform designs have accelerated oncology drug development (I-SPY, STAMPEDE). The proposal is a standing platform in the cooperative groups for symptom interventions (nausea, neuropathy, fatigue, mucositis, dermatologic toxicity), with common PRO endpoints, shared control arms and adaptive randomisation, embedded in routine care to keep costs low.

Hypothesis
The platform tests three times as many interventions per year as the current portfolio at lower cost per question and produces practice-changing results within three years of launch.
Rationale
Shared infrastructure and common endpoints are exactly what supportive care lacks; the cooperative groups already have the sites and the patients.
What would test it
Launch with four arms in two symptom domains and compare throughput, cost per completed comparison and time to guideline change against the preceding decade of supportive-care trials.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
research
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
4
Bottlenecks it attacks

Connected

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