Active clinical trials for "Squamous Cell Carcinoma of Head and Neck"

It is the investigators understanding that the combination of clinical trial with laboratory cellular/molecular assay is relevant to the current promising mainstream, the translational research. The design of this trial fulfills this concept and would be a good example conducting in Mackay Memorial hospital.

Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) incidence is increasing rapidly in the developed world. This has been attributed to a rise in Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection. HPV+OPSCC is considered a distinct disease entity, affecting younger patients and has a good prognosis following treatment. Subsequently, patients can live with the considerable side effects for several decades. Radiotherapy and cetuximab (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor-inhibitor) have demonstrated similar efficacy to 'platin' chemoradiotherapy (current standard treatment containing platinum-based compounds) in head and neck cancer, but is potentially less toxic. Results of this trial will be used to determine the optimum treatment of this debilitating cancer, with the primary aim of decreasing toxicity and improving quality of life for HPV+OPSCC patients.

To estimate the mean and standard deviation (SD) of the post-treatment decreases in the interstitial fluid pressure and hypoxia-specific PET-scan signal from GRID-treated tumors in patients with locally advanced squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck. The possible effects of GRID radiotherapy on tumor oxygenation levels and interstitial fluid pressure within the tumors will be measured by assessing the trend and statistical significance of the difference in values for each condition obtained prior to and just after GRID exposure in each subject enrolled in the study. We expect that there may be a trend for increases in tumor oxygenation and decreases in interstitial fluid pressure which would indicate that more accurately timed additional chemotherapy and radiation therapy would improve overall patient outcomes.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma are frequent. The chemoradiotherapy protocols are part of the reference treatment of locally advanced stage tumors. Diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) is a non radiating imaging, not requiring injection of gadolinium, giving informations on tumor activity, based on the brownian motion of water molecules. The differences in motion are expressed by the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). The ADC variations reflect changes in water molecules motion and redistribution between the intra- and extracellular compartments. Several studies have shown that malignant lesions have an ADC coefficient lowered as compared to benign lesions.

The results of previous studies suggest further development of [18F]EF5 as a PET tracer for imaging hypoxia. This is a non-randomized prospective study to obtain information on reproducibility of [18F]EF5 intratumor distribution using repeated pretreatment PET/CT scans.

This is a Phase II trial of definitive chemoradiotherapy (CTRT) given with the protease inhibitor,Nelfinavir (NFV), in patients with locally advanced head and neck. Eligible patients will receive a "lead-in" period of Nelfinavir (1250 mg po bid) for 7-14 days prior to initiation of CTRT. Nelfinavir will then be given concurrently with platinum-based chemotherapy and radiation therapy (planned total dose of 70 Gy over 7 weeks).

Early detection of viable residual tumor or early neoplastic recurrence represents a real challenge in monitoring patients treated with concomitant chemoradiotherapy squamous cell carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract. The locoregional recurrence rate is indeed high (up 40%) over the first two years of this therapeutic method. The conventional imaging methods such as CT and MRI appear limited in terms of sensitivity because of the many post-treatment changes are fibrosis, tissue edema and the tissue distortion. PET-CT 18F-FDG proves to be a non-invasive, reliable for the detection of residual tumor and metastasis, even in the absence of clinical signs. To date, the acquired CT examination in the same time and in the same position that PET is performed without iodinated contrast injection, used for anatomical identification and attenuation correction of PET fused images. The patient usually has a second CT imaging, centered on the neck with contrast injection iodized within the radiology department. To date, no team has yet studied the interest of the PET-CT 18F-FDG coupled with a CT scan with contrast injection iodized in the diagnosis of early recurrence in head and neck malignancies while interest of the contrast agent injection has been demonstrated in ovarian neoplastic recurrence research, pancreatic and colon.

Patients with locally advanced suqamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck region receive a hypoxia scan either by magnetic resonance tomography, computed tomography or fluoromisonidazole (FMISO)-PET-CT. Patients presenting with hypoxia are randomized into standard therapy consisting of intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with 70 Gy plus either 5-fluorouracil/mitomycin C or cisplatinum (Arm A) or a dose escalation of 10% (77Gy) to the hypoxic volume applied via simultaneous integrated boost in addition to the standard treatment (Arm B).

A phase III trial of induction chemotherapy followed by definitive radiotherapy plus Cetuximab versus chemoradiation in unresectable, locally advanced, squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNC).

This phase 2 trial studies how well panitumumab-IRDye800 works in identifying head and neck cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes in patients with head and neck cancer. Panitumumab-IRDye800 may help surgeons to identify metastatic lymph nodes during surgical removal of the primary tumor and/or lymph nodes of the neck with equal or better accuracy than the current methods.