# A global first-in-human network for academic cancer trials with single ethics review

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-global-academic-phase-one-network/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-global-academic-phase-one-network` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Academic first-in-human cancer trials recruit slowly because each hospital repeats ethics and regulatory review. Twenty to thirty academic phase 1 units across Europe, North America and Asia would share protocol templates, one mutually recognised review, a joint safety committee and harmonised contracts, so a trial opens at every site within weeks and rare molecular subtypes can be pooled.

## Summary

Twenty to thirty academic phase 1 oncology units across Europe, North America and Asia agree common protocols templates, a single mutually-recognised ethics and scientific review, a shared safety committee and harmonised contracts, so an academic first-in-human trial approved by the network opens at all sites within weeks. The EU Clinical Trials Regulation and US single-IRB rules already allow much of this; the missing part is an organisation that operates it for academic sponsors. The network also concentrates rare molecular subtypes and rare cancers, where single-site academic trials never accrue.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Academic first-in-human trials run through the network accrue at least three times faster than comparable single-institution academic trials and reach a recommended phase 2 dose within eighteen months in the majority of cases.
- Rationale: Industry phase 1 trials open globally through CRO networks; academic ones do not, and rare-cancer academic trials routinely close for slow accrual. The EORTC and the Children's Oncology Group show that academic multinational early-phase trials work when infrastructure is shared.
- Proposed test: Run five academic first-in-human trials through a pilot network of ten units and compare activation time and accrual rate with matched single-centre trials.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: regulator

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (The valley of death between lab and product): Butler, Translational research: crossing the valley of death (Nature 2008): https://doi.org/10.1038/453840a

## Connected records

- ideas: [A national non-profit contract research organisation for academic oncology trials](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-public-nonprofit-cro/), [A public indemnity pool so universities can sponsor first-in-human cancer trials](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-academic-sponsor-indemnity-pool/), [Regional translational institutes with academic GMP suites and IND teams](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-translational-institutes-gmp/)
- companies: [EORTC](https://onco.cc/companies/curie-nki-eortc/)
- institutions: [Gustave Roussy](https://onco.cc/institutions/gustave-roussy/), [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/mskcc/), [The Royal Marsden](https://onco.cc/institutions/royal-marsden/)
- terms: [Basket, umbrella, and platform trials](https://onco.cc/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/)
- bottlenecks: [Regulatory divergence between regions](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-regulatory-fragmentation/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)
- key papers: [Translational research: crossing the valley of death](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-butler-nature/)

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