# A standing platform for testing new drugs with radiotherapy

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-rt-drug-platform/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-rt-drug-platform` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Radiotherapy is given to half of all cancer patients but few new drugs are tested alongside it. A permanent trial platform would test drug-plus-radiation pairs systematically.

## Summary

Radiosensitisers and immune-radiation combinations have strong biological rationale but almost no industry sponsorship because radiotherapy is unpatentable. The CONCORDE platform in the UK tests DNA-damage-response inhibitors with thoracic radiotherapy. Extending the model to a standing multi-tumour radiotherapy-drug platform with dose-finding modules and a shared radiotherapy quality-assurance backbone would fill a systematic gap.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: A radiotherapy-drug platform will complete dose-finding for at least four novel agent-radiotherapy pairs per year, compared with fewer than one per year in the preceding decade across the same tumour types.
- Rationale: Radiotherapy quality assurance and dose-finding are the expensive fixed costs; a platform amortises them across agents.
- Proposed test: Fund a three-tumour platform (lung, head and neck, glioma) with four initial drug modules; measure agents through dose-finding per year.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: research

## Sources

- CONCORDE platform (page moved; nearest live section): https://www.leedsth.nhs.uk/research/

## Connected records

- companies: [NRG Oncology](https://onco.cc/companies/nrg-oncology/)
- institutions: [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/)
- cancers: [Glioma & glioblastoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/glioblastoma/), [Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/head-and-neck/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- fronts: [Radiation Therapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/radiation/)
- bottlenecks: [Surgery and radiotherapy cure most, get least](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-surgery-radiation-innovation/), [Too many combinations to test](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-combination-space/)

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