Public post-mortem reports when a cancer drug programme is stopped
When an aeroplane crashes, an independent report explains why so it does not happen again. When a cancer drug programme is abandoned, nothing is written. Change that.
Programme discontinuations are announced in earnings calls with a sentence. A structured termination report (target and mechanism, models used, what was predicted versus observed in humans, pharmacokinetics achieved, toxicities, the decision rationale, and lessons) published within twelve months of discontinuation, under a standard template, would turn each failure into shared learning. Precedents: aviation safety reporting, and the few published examples such as the analysis of the anti-CD47 and Rova-T programmes.
- Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.
- Knowledge reaches practice too slowly · Knowledge diffusion is slow: it takes years for a proven result to change what most patients receive, and no one can keep up with the literature.
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not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaA public registry of cancer treatments that were later shown not to work
Shares A machine-readable taxonomy of why cancer drugs fail, Failures are hidden, Knowledge reaches practice too slowly.
- IdeaA target de-risking index that counts failures as well as successes
Shares A machine-readable taxonomy of why cancer drugs fail, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaRescue the biological samples from failed trials for biomarker research
Shares A commons of shelved cancer drugs with their full data, open to new hypotheses, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaScore every preclinical model by how often it predicted the clinical result
Shares A machine-readable taxonomy of why cancer drugs fail, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaGive negative trials plenary slots at the big cancer conferences
Shares Failures are hidden, Knowledge reaches practice too slowly.
- IdeaEnd the abstract-to-paper gap: require full results with any conference presentation
Shares Failures are hidden, Knowledge reaches practice too slowly.
- IdeaRequire every oncology candidate to publish how much reaches the brain
Shares Failures are hidden, Knowledge reaches practice too slowly.
- IdeaFunder bonuses for releasing results and data within six months, negatives included
Shares Failures are hidden, Knowledge reaches practice too slowly.