A public fund that pays for phase 3 trials of cheap, off-patent drugs against cancer
Old drugs like aspirin, statins and beta-blockers show hints of fighting cancer, but no company will pay to prove it. A dedicated public fund should.
The ReDO project (Anticancer Fund) catalogues hundreds of off-patent drugs with anticancer signals; almost none have reached a definitive trial. Public funders have run a few (Add-Aspirin, ALASCCA, MA.32 metformin), and the UK, Belgium and the EU have discussed repurposing frameworks. The proposal is a dedicated international fund (order of $200-300 million a year, from NIHR, NCI, EU and philanthropy) with an independent prioritisation panel, a standing trial network, and a requirement that funded trials be designed to support regulatory label updates and guideline inclusion.
- No incentive to repurpose cheap drugs · Old, cheap drugs with anti-cancer signals never get the trials they need because no one profits from the result.
- Funding follows fashion, not burden · Money goes to the cancers and questions that are easy or popular, not the ones that kill most or where a dollar would do most.
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