# A commons of shelved cancer drugs with their full data, open to new hypotheses

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

## TL;DR

Companies shelve drugs that were safe but failed in the disease they tried. An oncology commons cataloguing discontinued assets with their mechanism, human pharmacokinetics, safety data and reasons for discontinuation, under template access terms, would let others test them where they might work, as NCATS and AstraZeneca schemes have shown.

## Summary

The NCATS New Therapeutic Uses programme, the AstraZeneca Open Innovation portfolio and the Medical Research Council industry asset-sharing scheme have shown that shelved compounds can be repurposed when made available with their data. An oncology-focused commons with a searchable catalogue of discontinued assets (mechanism, human pharmacokinetics, safety database, reasons for discontinuation) and template access terms would systematise this.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: At least ten discontinued oncology assets will enter new investigator-initiated trials within three years of the commons opening, at least one reaching a positive randomised result within seven years.
- Rationale: Many failures are indication failures, not molecule failures. Human safety data is the most expensive thing a shelved drug carries, and it is wasted when the drug sits on a shelf.
- Proposed test: Launch with five sponsors contributing twenty assets; track access requests, trials started and outcomes.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: industry

## Sources

- NCATS New Therapeutic Uses: https://ncats.nih.gov/research/research-activities/ntu

## Connected records

- ideas: [Public post-mortem reports when a cancer drug programme is stopped](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-termination-reports/), [Rescue the biological samples from failed trials for biomarker research](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-failed-trial-biobank/)
- collections: [DrugBank & ChEMBL](https://onco.cc/collections/drugbank-chembl/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/), [The valley of death between lab and product](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/)

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