Active clinical trials for "Neoplasms"

Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine malignancy. The association between inflammation and cancer is well established but the association between thyroiditis (inflammation of thyroid gland) especially Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) and thyroid cancer remains controversial. Chronic inflammation leads to a repeated cycle of cellular damage and subsequent healing which contributes to inappropriate cell proliferation and subsequent neoplastic transformation. One of the most common forms of Thyroiditis is Hashimoto's thyroiditis which is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease affects almost 5% of the population and is more common in women. For the first time, Dailey and Lindsay reported in 1955 an increased association between Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (HT) and thyroid cancer. They reported 35 thyroid cancers in 278 patients with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, a prevalence of 17.7% which they considered higher than the general population . Since then, various studies have been done, some studies have reported an increased risk of malignancy in Hashimoto's thyroiditis; others have failed to find an association. Most of the studies that have been done to identify the association between Hashimoto's thyroiditis and thyroid cancer are retrospective. The purpose of this pilot case-control study is to identify the association of Hashimoto's thyroiditis and thyroid cancer, to determine if the presence of Hashimoto's thyroiditis has any affect on the complication of thyroidectomy and prognostic factors of thyroid cancer.

Melanoma tumor tissue ( in particular regressive areas) present a lymphocytic infiltrate with an anti-tumoral specificity. The aim of the study is to analyse at different stages of the disease, tumor samples and to characterise the cellular infiltrate in situ ( in particular T lymphocytes, NK cells and macrophages), the role of inhibitor receptors on in situ immunosuppression, and potential modulation by medical treatments such as dacarbazine.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the sixth most common malignancy and the third most common cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The incidence of HCC is rising in Europe and the United States and is expected to continue to increase during the next 2 to 3 decades. The expected survival rate is still decimal, especially in patients with advanced HCC. However, in recent years, several treatment methods for patients with advanced HCC, including antiangiogenic chemotherapy, radiotherapy, concurrent chemoradiotherapy, and DC bead transarterial chemoembolization, have been developed. Among these new treatment methods, concurrent chemoradiotherapy has also proved to increase patient's survival rate. It is important to predict treatment response before treatment or immediately after treatment because there are several other treatment options as mentioned above. Recently, there have been several reports that MR perfusion parameters such as Ktrans can predict treatment response in cervical cancer and colorectal cancer. Therefore the purpose of the investigators study is to evaluate the feasibility of predicting treatment response by MR perfusion, contrast enhanced ultrasound parameters and biomarkers (IL-6, IL-12 and VEGF) in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma who undertake concurrent chemoradiotherapy.

Fecal occult blood test (FOBT) is a convenient tool for the screening of asymptomatic gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding while 「guaiac-based fecal occult test (G-FOBT) 」 is increasingly replaced by the use of an 「immunochemical-based test (I-FOBT) 」 that reacts with human globin, a protein that is digested by upper GI enzymes and is specific for detecting lower GI bleeding. However, in Taiwan, although the incidence of colorectal cancer is rapidly increasing, Helicobacter pylori-related upper GI pathologies remain highly prevalent, which may imply that mass screening solely based on I-FOBT could be insufficient as significant upper GI pathologies can be missed. Since I-FOBT dose not predict upper GI pathologies, the adjuncts of G-FOBT and H. pylori stool-antigen test (HpSA) may be a potential candidate to realize a pan-detecting assay based on stool samples in a population in which both lower and upper GI lesions are equally prevalent.

The aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy and safety of Tarceva versus combination of Gemcitabine plus Cisplatin as neoadjuvant treatment in patients with stage IIIA-N1,N2 NSCLC with EGFR activating mutation in exon 19 or 21.

As the use of endoscopic ultrasonography for mediastinal diagnosis and/or staging is widely spread in Belgium, the investigators aimed to determine the number of mediastinoscopies needed to detect one additional mediastinal lymph node invasion during routine clinical practice in the staging of potentially resectable clinical stage III non-small cell lung cancer.

In this study, the investigators will determine the utility of Tamoxifen, a non-cytotoxic agent, to improve quality of life, biochemical parameters, and bone marrow involvement in systemic mastocytosis patients having 1) up to 40% bone marrow infiltration by mast cells and/or 2) mediator-release symptoms which are not controlled by tolerated doses of standard "non-cytotoxic" medications regardless of the percentage bone marrow involvement by mastocytosis. The dose of Tamoxifen will be 40 mg/day and the duration of treatment will be for one year. Patients currently taking interferon alfa, imatinib mesylate, or cladribine will be excluded until these medications have been stopped.

The purpose of this study is to quantify the burden of treatment in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma in patients receiving lenalidomide after one prior treatment for myeloma.

The objective of this study is to determine and compare the performance of dermatologists (in Germany) on the excision decision against the performance of MelaFind, a non-invasive and objective multi-spectral computer vision system designed as a tool to aid dermatologists in the detection of early melanoma. The hypothesis is that MelaFind's sensitivity is superior to the average excisions sensitivity of dermatologists. Another objective is to determine and compare the performance of dermatologists (in Germany) with and without the aid of MelaFind. The hypothesis is that the average excision sensitivity of dermatologists with the aid of MelaFind is superior to the average excision sensitivity of dermatologists without the aid of MelaFind. A similar study was previously conducted with dermatologists in the US (NCT01011153). An exploratory objective is to compare the excision decisions of dermatologists from the previous study (in the US) to dermatologists in in this study (in Germany).

This study will evaluate a new imaging technology, termed optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI) for detecting and diagnosing pulmonary malignancy in the central airways.