{"entity":{"id":"idea-reg-recovery-style-platform-repurposing","kind":"idea","name":"A RECOVERY-style permanent platform trial of cheap drugs added to cancer care","aka":[],"tldr":"The UK's RECOVERY trial answered questions about dexamethasone and other cheap COVID drugs within months by randomising tens of thousands of ordinary hospital patients with a two-page consent and routine-data follow-up. Cancer needs the same permanent platform to test generics such as statins, metformin, aspirin and propranolol added to standard care.","summary":"RECOVERY enrolled tens of thousands of patients with a two-page consent, minimal data collection and routine-data follow-up, delivering definitive answers on dexamethasone and others within months. Oncology has platform trials (GBM AGILE, STAMPEDE, I-SPY) but none dedicated to repurposed generics across common cancers. The proposal is a perpetual pragmatic platform in one or more national health systems, embedded in routine care, randomising patients with common cancers to standard care with or without a generic candidate (statin, metformin, propranolol, aspirin, vitamin D, low-dose naltrexone, itraconazole and others), with survival from registries as the primary outcome and arms added and dropped on interim analyses.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"RECOVERY trial","url":"https://www.recoverytrial.net/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["cruk"],"pathways":[],"terms":["basket-umbrella-platform","os"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-generic-repurposing","b-trial-design"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"The platform randomises at least 5,000 patients a year at a per-patient cost under $500 and delivers a definitive answer on at least one candidate every 18 months.","rationale":"The cost of a conventional phase 3 trial, not scientific uncertainty, is why repurposing questions remain open; routine-data platforms cut that cost by an order of magnitude and STAMPEDE showed the design works in oncology.","test":"Fund a two-year set-up in one national system with three initial arms; report enrolment, cost per patient and time to first interim analysis.","maturity":"early-clinical","actor":"research","cost":"medium","horizonYears":4},"route":"/ideas/idea-reg-recovery-style-platform-repurposing/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"cruk","kind":"institution","name":"Cancer Research UK","route":"/institutions/cruk/"}],"term":[{"id":"basket-umbrella-platform","kind":"term","name":"Basket, umbrella, and platform trials","route":"/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/"},{"id":"os","kind":"term","name":"Overall survival (OS)","route":"/terms/os/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-generic-repurposing","kind":"bottleneck","name":"No incentive to repurpose cheap drugs","route":"/bottlenecks/b-generic-repurposing/"},{"id":"b-trial-design","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trial design, endpoints and cost","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-design/"}],"roadmap":[{"id":"trial-modernisation-roadmap","kind":"roadmap","name":"Trial modernisation roadmap: the randomised trial → platforms and adaptive designs → decentralised, pragmatic and always-on","route":"/roadmaps/trial-modernisation-roadmap/"}]}}