Developing a platform trial for obesity

Platform trials are different to traditional clinical trials. Instead of testing a specific drug or other type of treatment they are set up to study a disease such as obesity, for example.

Because platform trials aren’t testing a single intervention, such as a drug or treatment, they can be open ended, meaning they don’t have to finish at a specific time.

This allows researchers to keep adding new therapies or discontinuing existing ones if they find something that works better, or if they find that a drug or treatment is ineffective or harmful.

Project aims

Led by the Biomedical Research Centres in Leicester, Oxford and Cambridge, this project aimed to design a trials platform for obesity studies in the UK.

The platform would let researchers test new obesity therapies and technologies in adults and children.

To achieve this, we collaborated with industry partners, universities, the NHS and other stakeholders, such as patients and underserved groups.

We:

• Mapped the needs of organisations commissioning phase 2 trials for obesity
• Engaged people living with obesity and relevant stakeholders to understand how recruitment channels, retention, and patient experience can be optimised in obesity trials

What we did

We conducted extensive consultations and engagement meetings with:

• patient groups
• members of the public
• pharmaceutical and medical technology companies
• key infrastructure bodies such as NHS England and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

This allowed us to produce a report and submit an application for the next phase of this work.