In this commentary in Clinical and Translational Science, the authors urge the global translational and quantitative pharmacology community to come together and contribute our tools and know-how to fight COVID-19 and prepare for future pandemics.

Many clinical studies for COVID-19 are underpowered, redundant, and not likely to be pooled for analysis.  We are wasting valuable resources.  We should be channeling these resources to efforts that have a higher likelihood of providing additional, new information in identifying the right drugs and combination therapies as well as vaccines to fight COVID-19.

“Our toolbox allows developing smarter trial designs, including approaches such as umbrella designs, incorporating dose regimen diversity; PK/PD evaluations, even in real-time, leveraging biosimulation to optimize dose regimens that may not have been formally studied, and applying model-based meta-analysis approaches to explore the impact of dose on efficacy from across multiple dose arms and trials.”

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Title: Time to step up: A call to action for the clinical and quantitative pharmacology community to accelerate therapeutics for COVID-19

Authors: Dan Hartman MD, Steven Kern PhD, Fran Brown PhD, Suzanne K. Minton PhD, and Craig R. Rayner PharmD