UK and Australian governments team to support platform studies
The UK and Australia have set up a program to support “platform studies” in a bid to encourage the development of drugs for diseases with limited therapeutic options.
The program will see Australia’s Medical Research Future Fund and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) provide a total A$30 million for platform clinical studies.
Platform studies are single trials that evaluate multiple therapies. The key difference from conventional studies is that platform studies are open ended and medical interventions can be added or removed from protocols as the research progresses.
The idea is that rather than focusing on proving that a candidate therapy is better than current drugs, platform studies focus on identifying treatments that have the greatest impact on disease.
The joint call for research will support trials in areas such as childhood; brain and prostate cancers; stroke and traumatic brain injuries; and neurodegenerative diseases as well as cardiometabolic conditions including obesity.
Natasha Ploenges, CEO of Australia’s Health and Medical Research Office, said, “This important collaboration with the UK will fund clinical trials in key areas of unmet clinical need, paving the way for groundbreaking treatments that will benefit patients globally.”
This was echoed by NHMRC CEO Steve Wesselingh, who said, “International collaborations such as this joint call allow us to explore untapped global talent, and it is exciting to think that the outcomes of these platform trials, where multiple treatments are evaluated simultaneously, could help combat many areas of health and medical research where there is an unmet clinical need.”
NIHR chief Lucy Chappell, focusing on the potential benefits of collaborative support for drug research, added, “International efforts such as this partnership drive innovation in health and care, saving and improving lives.
“Working with our partners in Australia will allow us to maximize our talent, resources and capacity in order to encourage, fund, and support life-changing research for the benefit of people across the UK and Australia who face complex health and social care challenges,” she said.
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