BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product Development

Master protocols present systematic path forward for evaluating COVID-19 treatments

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April 4, 2020 2:35 AM UTC
Updated on Apr 10, 2020 at 11:39 PM UTC

The globe is now scattered with small, investigator-led studies of COVID-19 candidate therapies, with no systematic way for regulators to determine which are safest and most beneficial. Master protocol trials can solve that problem by standardizing procedures and endpoints across multiple treatments.

At least four large-scale master protocol trials started recruiting patients in March. While they have different treatment arms and endpoints, they all share the goals of delivering head-to-head data on promising therapies quickly...