# A standard cross-company combination agreement that takes weeks, not years, to sign

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-combination-template-agreement/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-combination-template-agreement` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Companies with drugs that might work together rarely test them because the legal negotiation takes longer than the trial. A pre-written standard contract would fix that.

## Summary

The CRUK Combinations Alliance and NCI CTEP show that a neutral third party with template agreements can run combination studies across companies. Extending this to an industry-wide, pre-negotiated 'combination clinical trial agreement' (like the standard licences in software) covering supply, data, publication, IP on combination findings and a default revenue rule would remove the largest non-scientific barrier.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Adoption of a template agreement by at least ten large sponsors will halve the median time from combination hypothesis to first patient dosed in academic-led cross-company combination trials.
- Rationale: Standard material transfer and clinical trial agreements (for example the Accelerated Clinical Trial Agreement in the US) have already cut academic site contracting times. The combination-specific clauses (who owns a method-of-use patent, who supplies free drug) are the ones that stall.
- Proposed test: Draft with a neutral convenor (for example a cancer charity plus a trade body), sign with a coalition of sponsors, and measure time-to-agreement and time-to-first-patient for the next twenty combination trials versus the twenty before.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: industry

## Sources

- NCI CTEP: https://ctep.cancer.gov/

## Connected records

- institutions: [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- bottlenecks: [Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/), [Too many combinations to test](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-combination-space/)
- ideas: [A patent pool for combination method-of-use claims](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-combination-patent-pool/), [Every approved cancer drug ships with a public combination-readiness data pack](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-combo-readiness-dossier/)

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