# A shared compound library that rare cancer researchers can actually use

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-shared-compound-access-pool/  
OnCo record `idea-bio2-shared-compound-access-pool` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Companies hold thousands of well-characterised drugs that could help rare cancers, but each request takes a year of legal negotiation. One standing agreement would unblock it.

## Summary

Academic rare cancer groups routinely fail to obtain clinical-grade compound for investigator-initiated trials because material transfer and intellectual property negotiation exceed the capacity of small teams. A pre-negotiated multi-company access pool (standard terms, a single application route, an independent scientific review committee and mandatory data return) would industrialise access. Precedents exist in structural genomics consortia and in some public-private compound-sharing schemes.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: A standing access pool with standard terms reduces median time from request to compound receipt from over 12 months to under 3, and increases investigator-initiated rare cancer trials measurably within three years.
- Rationale: Open science consortia have shown that pre-agreed standard terms remove the dominant transaction cost in cross-institution collaboration. Companies gain rare-indication data at almost no cost and retain their commercial position.
- Proposed test: Recruit five companies and 20 compounds into a pilot pool, then publish the median time to access and the number of trials initiated in the first two years.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: industry

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Rare and paediatric cancers without markets): Gatta et al., Rare cancers are not so rare: the rare cancer burden in Europe (EJC 2011): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejca.2011.08.008

## Connected records

- collections: [ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/collections/clinicaltrials-gov/), [DrugBank & ChEMBL](https://onco.cc/collections/drugbank-chembl/)
- institutions: [European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)](https://onco.cc/institutions/esmo/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- bottlenecks: [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/), [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)
- key papers: [Rare cancers are not so rare: the rare cancer burden in Europe](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-gatta-eur-j-cancer/)
- roadmaps: [Drug discovery roadmap: screening in mice → maps of dependency → designing in silico](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/drug-discovery-roadmap/)

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