# A permanent platform trial for supportive-care interventions inside cooperative groups

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-moon-supportive-care-platform-trial/  
OnCo record `idea-moon-supportive-care-platform-trial` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Instead of one-off small studies, run a standing trial that continuously tests new treatments for side-effects, adding and dropping arms as evidence arrives.

## Summary

Supportive-care trials are typically small, single-question and slow. Platform designs have accelerated oncology drug development (I-SPY, STAMPEDE). The proposal is a standing platform in the cooperative groups for symptom interventions (nausea, neuropathy, fatigue, mucositis, dermatologic toxicity), with common PRO endpoints, shared control arms and adaptive randomisation, embedded in routine care to keep costs low.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: The platform tests three times as many interventions per year as the current portfolio at lower cost per question and produces practice-changing results within three years of launch.
- Rationale: Shared infrastructure and common endpoints are exactly what supportive care lacks; the cooperative groups already have the sites and the patients.
- Proposed test: Launch with four arms in two symptom domains and compare throughput, cost per completed comparison and time to guideline change against the preceding decade of supportive-care trials.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: research

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Toxicity and quality of life are undervalued): Di Maio et al., Symptomatic toxicities experienced during anticancer treatment: agreement between patient and physician reporting (JCO 2015): https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2014.57.9334

## Connected records

- terms: [Basket, umbrella, and platform trials](https://onco.cc/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/)
- bottlenecks: [Toxicity and quality of life are undervalued](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-toxicity-qol/), [Trial design, endpoints and cost](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-design/)
- key papers: [Symptomatic toxicities experienced during anticancer treatment: agreement between patient and physician reporting in three randomized trials](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-di-maio-j-clin-oncol/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/idea-moon-supportive-care-platform-trial.json