Master Protocol Efficiencies Speeding COVID-19 Treatments

“How can we find drugs to treat COVID as fast as possible? The master protocol is to me the obvious example,” suggests Lisa LaVange, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at UNC Chapel Hill and former Director of the Office of Biostatistics at CDER, FDA. “They do require quite a bit more upfront planning but those that are launched and have been running for a while have been able to study a large number of drugs in a really smart way.” Lisa serves on the Therapeutics Clinical Committee and as Co-Chair of the Master Protocol Subcommittee for Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Innovations & Vaccines (ACTIV) and was interviewed by Richard Zink, Vice President, Data Management, Biostatistics, Statistical Programming at Lexitas and Associate Editor of Therapeutic Innovation and Regulatory Science.