# Public post-mortem reports when a cancer drug programme is stopped

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

## TL;DR

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.

## Summary

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.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Regular publication of termination reports will reduce the number of subsequent programmes against the same target with the same failure mode by at least a third, measurable in pipeline databases over five years.
- Rationale: Each failure carries information about targets, models and endpoints that the next entrant lacks. Duplicated failures against IDO1, CD47 and DLL3 ADCs show the cost of silence.
- Proposed test: Persuade three sponsors to publish reports for their next five discontinued oncology programmes; survey competitors and academics on whether the reports changed decisions.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: industry

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Failures are hidden): Anderson et al., Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov (NEJM 2015): https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1409364

## Connected records

- ideas: [A commons of shelved cancer drugs with their full data, open to new hypotheses](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-shelved-asset-commons/), [A machine-readable taxonomy of why cancer drugs fail](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-failure-taxonomy/), [Listed companies must disclose top-line data, not just 'did not meet endpoint'](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-material-failure-disclosure/)
- drugs: [Epacadostat](https://onco.cc/drugs/epacadostat/), [Magrolimab](https://onco.cc/drugs/magrolimab/), [Rovalpituzumab tesirine](https://onco.cc/drugs/rovalpituzumab-tesirine/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/), [Knowledge reaches practice too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/)
- key papers: [Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-anderson-n-engl-j-med/)

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