Active clinical trials for "Brain Neoplasms"

Removing a tumor from your brain is hard to do because, very often, brain tumors do not have boundaries that are easy for your surgeon to find. In many cases, the surgeon can't tell exactly where the tumor begins or ends. The surgeon usually can remove most of your tumor by looking at the MRI images that were taken of your brain before surgery. However, the surgeon does not have any good way to tell if the entire tumor has been removed or not. Removing the entire tumor is very important because leaving tumor behind may allow it to grow back which could decrease your chances of survival. It is possible to detect tumor cells by making them glow with a specific color of light (a process called fluorescence). This can be done by having you take the drug, ALA, before your surgery. ALA is a molecule that already exists in the cells of your body. Once enough of it is in your body, it gets converted into another molecule named PpIX. If blue light is shined on a tumor that has enough PpIX, it will glow with red light (fluorescence) that can be detected with a special camera. In this study, we want to determine how the fluorescence (red light) is related to the tumor which appears in the images that are normally taken of your brain (which the surgeon uses to guide the removal of your tumor) and the tumor tissue that will be removed during your surgery. Removing the entire tumor is very important because leaving tumor behind may allow it to grow back which could decrease your chances of survival.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the prophylactic use of itraconazole is a better option than empirical use of itraconazole in the management (prevention and treatment) of fungal infection associated with high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in children with high-risk solid tumor.

Despite significant advances in the understanding of brain tumor biology and genetics as well as improvements in surgical techniques, radiotherapy administration, and chemotherapy methods, many primary brain tumors remain incurable. Most primary brain tumors are highly infiltrative neoplasms, and are therefore unlikely to be cured by local treatments such as surgery, focal radiotherapy, radiosurgery or brachytherapy. A particularly problematic aspect of the management of patients with brain tumors is the eventual development of enhancing lesions on MRI after radiation therapy. The treating physician is then left with the dilemma of what this enhancing lesion may represent (radiation necrosis versus recurrent tumor). The differential diagnosis is between recurrent tumor or radiation necrosis however the amount of each contributing to the enhancing mass on MRI is difficult if not impossible to assess. This particular problem is very common and most patients develop some degree of radiation necrosis after therapy with radiation. Differentiation of necrosis from recurrence is particularly challenging. MRI is typically unable to make this important distinction as there is simply an enhancing mass, the etiology of which could be either necrosis or recurrence. Other imaging methods such as FDG-PET have been used but this technique is also complicated in that the normal brain has FDG uptake and it is often difficult to differentiate recurrence from necrosis. [F-18]FLT may prove to be the most reliable method in making this important differentiation (necrosis versus recurrence) as normal brain and necrotic brain do not have proliferative activity and thus no [F-18]FLT uptake whereas tumor will have proliferative activity and thus [F-18]FLT uptake.

This study is conducted to compare the contrast effect and safety of SH L562BB with ProHance, which has already been approved as a pharmaceutical product of similar indication.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a specialised nuclear medicine procedure that uses positron emitting radiolabeled tracer molecules to measure biological activity. The most common of these radiolabeled tracers is 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), which is used to determine abnormal glucose metabolism in tumours and other sites. It has general applications in all areas where abnormal glucose metabolism may be present including in circumstances such as differentiating the tumour from scar tissue; evaluating the presence of the tumour in light of rising tumour markers and normal morphological imaging techniques; and assessing response to therapy where other techniques are deemed to be unhelpful. The Cross Cancer Institute (CCI) has recently been funded to establish a PET centre, and this study will prove the effectiveness of PET scanning in the Canadian health care environment and validate the data that have been developed in other jurisdictions in specific oncologic indications.

This is a single arm, open label trial to assess the safety and efficacy of tucatinib in combination with pembrolizumab and trastuzumab for the treatment of HER2+ breast cancer brain metastases (BCBM). A total of 33 patients with untreated or previously treated and progressing HER2+ BCBM not requiring urgent central nervous system (CNS)-directed therapy will be enrolled. The study will determine the recommended dose of tucatinib in this combination and assess the efficacy of this combination in controlling CNS disease in patients with HER2+ BCBM.

An open-label, single dose, single arm, prospective, multicenter Phase 3 study to establish the diagnostic performance of 18F fluciclovine positron emission tomography (PET) in detecting recurrent brain metastases after radiation therapy

This study is meant to compare different surgical approaches to brain cancer.

The study is a phase II with safety lead in, single arm, study using Nal-IRI in combination with pembrolizumab. Nal-IRI will be given IV every 2 weeks starting at 50mg/m2. Pembrolizumab will be given 400mg IV every 6 weeks. Treatment will continue until progression, intolerable side effects or patient/doctor decision to discontinue treatment.

This is randomized study of neurocognitive outcomes in patients with five or more brain metastases treated with stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), specifically the Gamma Knife (GK) system, or whole-brain radiation therapy (WBRT). The primary aim of this study is to compare the change in neurocognitive function outcome between baseline and 6 months in WBRT versus SRS treatment groups.