# Competing sponsors share one control arm in the same indication

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr1-shared-control-arms-across-sponsors/  
OnCo record `idea-tr1-shared-control-arms-across-sponsors` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

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.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- 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.
- Proposed 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

## Sources

- 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): https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j4530

## Connected records

- cancers: [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/), [Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic/)
- terms: [Basket, umbrella, and platform trials](https://onco.cc/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/)
- bottlenecks: [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/), [Trial design, endpoints and cost](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-design/), [Trials enrol too few, too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/)
- key papers: [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](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-davis-bmj/)

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