{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr1-shared-control-arms-across-sponsors","kind":"idea","name":"Competing sponsors share one control arm in the same indication","aka":[],"tldr":"Three companies testing three drugs against the same standard treatment each recruit their own control group. Pooling those controls in one shared study would need fewer patients and answer faster.","summary":"A neutral academic sponsor runs a master protocol in a defined indication with a single concurrent control arm; each company adds its experimental arm under a pre-agreed data-access and publication charter, paying a per-patient fee. Randomisation is concurrent, so this is a true RCT for each comparison. Precedents include the Lung-MAP and I-SPY structures, but industry-led registrational use is rare.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Trial design, endpoints and cost): Davis et al., Availability of evidence of benefits on survival and quality of life of cancer drugs approved by EMA 2009-13 (BMJ 2017)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j4530"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["nsclc","pancreatic"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["basket-umbrella-platform"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-trial-design","b-trial-enrolment","b-ip-collaboration"],"keyPapers":["paper-davis-bmj"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"A shared-control master protocol will reduce total patients randomised to control by more than half across participating programmes and produce registrational-quality comparisons acceptable to regulators.","rationale":"Control patients receive no experimental benefit and are the largest avoidable cost across a competitive indication. Regulators have signalled openness to master protocols for registration.","test":"Convene sponsors developing agents in one crowded first-line setting under an antitrust-cleared charter; run the shared-control protocol for one round of arms and compare efficiency with the sponsors' stand-alone plans.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"industry","cost":"medium","horizonYears":4},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr1-shared-control-arms-across-sponsors/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"},{"id":"pancreatic","kind":"cancer","name":"Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma","route":"/cancers/pancreatic/"}],"term":[{"id":"basket-umbrella-platform","kind":"term","name":"Basket, umbrella, and platform trials","route":"/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-ip-collaboration","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration","route":"/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/"},{"id":"b-trial-design","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trial design, endpoints and cost","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-design/"},{"id":"b-trial-enrolment","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trials enrol too few, too slowly","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-davis-bmj","kind":"paper","name":"Availability of evidence of benefits on overall survival and quality of life of cancer drugs approved by European Medicines Agency: retrospective cohort study of drug approvals 2009-13","route":"/key-papers/paper-davis-bmj/"}]}}