CANCER: Trials with potential global reach and other challenging trials

A clinical trial programme is repurposing cheap, already-approved drugs to treat cancers they were never designed for, and testing treatments that could work in countries with minimal healthcare budgets. This matters because most cancer trials test expensive new drugs that take years to reach patients and remain out of reach for low-income countries. Repurposing existing drugs—such as common antibiotics or blood-pressure medicines—can slash development time and cost, making treatments available sooner and more affordably. The programme also targets cancers linked to infections like hepatitis, *Helicobacter pylori*, and HPV, which are more common in poorer regions. By focusing on these, the trials address diseases that disproportionately affect the global poor. If successful, the programme could produce treatments that are cheap enough to deploy in resource-poor settings, where cancer survival rates are often far lower than in wealthy nations. It could also improve diagnostic accuracy—for example, by using systematic reviews to identify better ways to diagnose prostate cancer without unnecessary biopsies. The work is not fundamental science; it is pragmatic, globally-minded clinical testing designed to shorten the gap between a drug’s approval and its use in the patients who need it most.