Mastering master protocols: lessons from COVID
RECOVERY was the outlier rather than the norm, but the failures could shape how these trials should operate next time
Despite the success of the U.K.’s RECOVERY trial, master protocol trials on the whole were not the force for rapid, efficient drug development during COVID-19 that they should have been. But the failures have been as instructive, pointing to what works and doesn’t, and setting the ground rules for a network of such trials to be deployed when disaster next strikes.
BioCentury’s analysis of 16 master protocol studies initiated since the start of the pandemic shows that RECOVERY, together with REMAP-CAP, formed the exceptions rather than the rule. The trials, which are both ongoing, have each yielded three positive and six negative readouts, a level of productivity more than twice that of the next in line, SOLIDARITY, which produced four negative readouts. ...