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ideasIdea

A standard for tumour-agnostic approvals: minimum histologies and hierarchical modelling

Some drugs are approved for any cancer with a particular mutation. Clear rules on how many cancer types must be tested, and how to combine results across them, would make these approvals more consistent and faster.

Regulators publish a standard for tissue-agnostic evidence: a minimum number of histologies with a minimum number of evaluable patients each, a Bayesian hierarchical model for borrowing across histologies with pre-specified heterogeneity thresholds, and rules for excluding histologies that show no activity. Sponsors design basket trials to the standard, and approvals list the histologies supporting them.

Hypothesis
A published standard will reduce time to tumour-agnostic approval for genuinely histology-independent effects and prevent extension to histologies where effect is absent.
Rationale
Existing tumour-agnostic approvals (MSI-high, NTRK, BRAF V600E, RET) were reviewed case by case; basket trial statistics for cross-histology borrowing are mature and would benefit from regulatory commitment.
What would test it
Apply the draft standard retrospectively to past tumour-agnostic submissions and check consistency of decisions; then prospectively for the next three submissions.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
regulator
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks

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