Active clinical trials for "Breast Neoplasms"

The main of this study is to assess the feasibility of a patients follow-up visit receiving trastuzumab subcutaneous by Advanced Practice Nurse.

Millions of cancer patients every year receive chemotherapy with only a 20-60% probability of pathological response, while most experience adverse side effects that lower quality of life without prolonging it. Reliable identification of ineffective therapies can eliminate needless human suffering while increasing overall probability of positive response to treatment. Chemotherapy resistance profiling entails testing whether a patient exhibits strong resistance to a therapy prior to its final selection by the oncologist. However, there are no effective methods for quickly assessing patient chemotherapy resistance. Patient Derived Xenograft (PDX) models have replaced older Chemotherapy Sensitivity and Resistance Assays (CSRAs) to some degree, but both technologies suffer from long testing times, high cost, and/or low accuracy. Motility Contrast Tomography (MCT) has recently emerged as a technology that measures the biodynamic response of intact tumor biopsies to applied therapeutics by using Doppler detection of infrared light scattered from intracellular motions inside living tissue. Several small scale animal, xenograft, and human studies have shown this phenotypic profiling technique to be highly accurate in prediction of response and resistance to chemotherapy. This project will be the first human trial of biodynamic phenotyping to predict chemotherapy response among breast cancer patients. Specifically, the study cohort will include patients selected for neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment, because this setting offers the opportunity for near-term outcome measurement at the time of post-chemo surgery. Pre-therapy fresh tumor specimens will be imaged using MCT, and the resulting bio-dynamic signatures will be compared to confirmed pathological response at the time of surgery. Observation of a high predictive value will provide the basis for expanded clinical trials and prompt commercialization of a biodynamic chemotherapy selection assay for breast and other cancer patients.

Evaluating Multiparameter Gene Testing as a Predictor of Short Term Endocrine Therapy Response in Hormone Receptor Positive Breast Cancers

The aim of this study is to identify the determinants of cancer-related fatigue, and the long-term effect of the different adjuvants treatments will be explored. A prospective longitudinal study in women diagnosed for the first time with stage I-III breast cancer and who have undergone surgery, has been designed to meet the study aims.

RATIONALE: Learning about chronic pain in women who have undergone surgery for breast cancer may help improve the quality of life for these patients and may help doctors plan the best treatment. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying chronic pain in women who have undergone surgery for stage I, stage II, or stage III breast cancer.

RATIONALE: Gathering information over time from blood samples and measurements of activity, sleep, mood, and cognition may help doctors learn more about fatigue in breast cancer survivors and plan the best treatment. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying fatigue in breast cancer survivors.

The purpose of this study is to assess clinical outcomes after Letrozole treatment according to the estrogen receptor expression in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor positive breast cancer.

RATIONALE: DNA analysis of tumor tissue may help doctors predict how patients who receive paclitaxel will respond to treatment. PURPOSE: This laboratory study is evaluating gene expression in predicting response to paclitaxel in patients with breast cancer.

Herceptin has shown significant improvement in breast cancer therapy and improved survival of patients over-expressing the HER-2 protein by 50%. However, Herceptin has shown to negatively affect the heart, and frequent heart monitoring with multiple gated acquisition (MUGA) scans is required. MUGA scans use radiation and are not very accurate. This study will use cardiac magnetic resonance images (CMRs) to evaluate heart function and compare to MUGA scans in patients receiving Herceptin for early-stage breast cancer. In addition, novel biomarkers will also be assessed at the same time to help identify possible patients at risk for developing heart toxicities.

Primary Objectives To identify hypermethylated genes in paired pretreatment breast tumor tissue and plasma samples from locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer patients using a known gene panel which includes APC1, Cyclin D2, RARB, RASSF1A, Twist, Hin1 and GSTP1. Rationale: We and others have determined the optimal panel of genes that are able to detect free DNA in plasma and serum. We will determine if the same panel of genes is effective for detecting tumor DNA in the plasma of locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer patients. Further, to determine if the methylation profile of the plasma DNA for these genes is the same or different from the primary tumor at presentation, we will analyze the primary tumor DNA from fresh frozen samples. To identify methylation pattern changes in the same subset of patients' plasma samples at 24 hours after completion of cycle 1 of chemotherapy and within 24 hours before cycle 2. Rationale: The optimal timing of sampling for methylation analysis that is reflective of the tumors response to chemotherapy is not known. How soon methylation changes are observed, whether they are high within 24 hours, as that tumor responds to chemotherapy, or whether changes can be observed only some time after one cycle of chemotherapy will be studied. (3) To also identify methylation pattern changes in breast tumor tissue after one cycle of chemotherapy. Rationale: To look for a correlation with plasma methylation patterns Secondary Objectives (1) To correlate our observed patterns of methylation pre- and post-treatment with clinical parameters such as clinical and/or radiological response and patient outcome.