Speaker
Edward Mills, PhD, FRCP Professor Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence & Impact McMaster University, Canada
Topic
Early Treatment of COVID-19 with Repurposed Therapies: The TOGETHER Adaptive Platform Trial
Keywords
COVID-19 treatment; Adaptive Platform Trial; Fluvoxamine; Repurposed therapies, TOGETHER Trial
Key Points
- The most successful clinical trials have 1 thing in common; they are all Adaptive Platform Trials with an overarching master protocol that plans for changes in the long term, such as changing the intervention.
- Perpetual trials are key to effective adaptable trials, where the focus is to build a trial infrastructure that is not abandoned at the end of the trial, but repurposed to quickly and efficiently begin another trial.
- The TOGETHER Trial is a randomized Adaptive Platform Trial studying repurposed therapies to treat COVID-19.
- In the TOGETHER Trial, participants were randomized to either a placebo arm of the study, or to a repurposed therapy arm of the study. If a particular repurposed therapy didn’t show significant benefit for COVID-19 patients, that arm of the study was discontinued and an additional repurposed therapy was introduced in a new arm of the study.
- After many trial therapies showed little effect, Fluvoxamine, an SSRI commonly used for depression, has shown promising results when repurposed to treat COVID-19.
Discussion Themes
With important breakthroughs on COVID treatments, should we wait until a study is completed, accepted by a journal, and published before disseminating the findings?
Final results on the of Fluvoxamine trials are not yet available, but given the data thus far, there are no major concerns about the safety and tolerability of this medication.
Read more about the TOGETHER Early Treatment of COVID Trial.
Tags
#pctGR, @Collaboratory1, @TogetherTrial