Active clinical trials for "Neoplasms"

Ovarian cancer is the first mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies. The incidence of ovarian cancer increased in recent 10 years. Ovarian cancer indeed is a disease that should be respected, however, there were only few of research work focusing on it in Taiwan. To study the mechanisms of carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer will help us understand this disease and develop new strategies of diagnosis and prevention for ovarian cancer in the future. The present diagnostic methods of malignancy are clinical symptoms, physical examination, evaluation of tumor markers and instruments. It is a important issue to diagnose cancer earlier to improve the survival of cancer patients. By the development of biomedical science, many genes have been identified to be related with the carcinogenesis. If we can detect the possibility of genetic mutation earlier, we may deal with the suspected areas of malignancy as soon as possible. To our present knowledge, carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer has strong correlation with some special genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. There is 1 out of 200 normal population with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation in the western countries. The incidences of BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation even increase to 30-50% in the population of familial ovarian cancer. Women with BRCA1 gene mutation have 80% to get breast cancer before the age of 70 and 63% of them would get ovarian cancer before the age of 70. Women with BRCA2 gene mutation have 80% to get breast or ovarian cancer before the age of 70. It seems that the genetic diagnosis of BRCA1/BRCA2 has its clinical practice. The development of new instrument- denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) is to use automated detection to find out the minute or single mutation of nucleotide. It has been applied to the clinical service by utilizing DHPLC for the genetic diagnosis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 of breast cancer patients in the department of Genetic Medicine of our hospital. It will become a most powerful tool to establish the database of BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation of the ovarian cancer patients in Taiwan, when we can use the technique of DHPLC combining with the direct DNA sequencing.

Uveal Melanoma is the most common primary intraocular tumor in adults. Most tumors metastasize to the liver. So far no sensitive or specific serological tumor marker is routinely used. The marker "Melanoma inhibitory activity" is a promising marker. Study hypothesis is to detect metastatic lesions in an early stage. This would increase life expectance of our patients

This study has investigated the quality of life of patients with vestibular schwannoma using this specific scale prospectively, whether treated surgically or monitored.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an endemic malignancy in Southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. It is highly associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Radiation therapy alone is indicated for early stage I to II diseases while concurrent chemoradiation is required for more advanced stage III to IVB diseases. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) is the standard radiation technique for NPC, in virtue of its superior target coverage and dose sparing to adjacent critical organs-at-risks. Plasma EBV DNA and other novel plasma biomarkers have been extensively investigated in NPC. Previous studies have proven their predictive and prognostic values in NPC diagnosis, surveillance and survival outcomes. We would like to investigate the roles of plasma biomarkers including plasma EBV DNA on treatment response evaluation, survival and prognosis on NPC, in the modern era of precision radiation therapy. This will provide important information on refining on the current edition of AJCC/UICC staging classification.

This study will evaluate the concordance of RAS mutation detection between the results obtained from circulating tumor DNA and those obtained with the "standard" method (testing from tumor tissue).

Radiation-associated carotid vasculopathy is a common late sequelae in patients with head and neck cancer, which correlates with the incidence of stroke. Currently, little is known about the incidence of radiation-associated carotid vasculopahty in the context of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The aim of this study is to determine whether IMRT will increase the incidence of carotid vasculopathy in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

The aim of the study is to develop a computer program which is able to classify different entities of colorectal polyps on the basis of optical polyp features. In the end, the computer program shall differentiate between (i) hypeplastic polyps, (ii) adenomas and (iii) serrated adenomas . In the first phase of the study a computer program will be established which aims to distinguish between the above mentions entities on the basis of optical features derived from still images. A machine learning apporach will be used for creating the program. Afterwards, in a second phase of the study, still images of 100 polyps (not used in the first phase) will be presented to the computer program. Quality of the computer program will be tested by calculating the accuracy for differentiating the three different polyp types. The gold standard for true polyp diagnoses will be based on histopathological diagnoses of the polyps. The same pictures of 100 polyps will also be presented to human experts. Experts will also predict histopathological diagnoses on the basis of optical polyps featurs. Accuracy of computer-decisions and human expert predictions will be compared. The establishment of a well- functioning computer program is the primary aim of the study.

The goal of the SFI is to provide non-invasive information about tissue remodeling occurring during melanocytic transition and atypia development in the skin

This is a prospective, multi-center, blinded feasibility study. The objective of this study is to test the feasibility of the detection of tumor DNA of a variety of tumors in peripheral blood using a novel process for the detection of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA).

Patients with known ovarian cancer will be imaged up to four times with FDG-PET, C13 MRI and other novel MRI techniques during their treatment course including: before the start of any treatment (with optional repeat scanning), after the first dose of chemotherapy (optional), after the third dose of chemotherapy (optional) and after surgery (optional). Imaging findings will be compared to biological properties of cancer tissue samples.