Active clinical trials for "Leukemia, Myelogenous, Chronic, BCR-ABL Positive"

RATIONALE: Colony-stimulating factors, such as sargramostim, may increase the number of immune cells found in bone marrow or peripheral blood and may bring about complete remission in patients who have chronic phase chronic myelogenous leukemia. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying sargramostim to see how well it works in treating patients with chronic phase chronic myelogenous leukemia that is not in complete cytogenetic remission after initial treatment.

Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of homoharringtonine plus low-dose cytarabine in treating patients who have newly diagnosed chronic phase chronic myelogenous leukemia. Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop cancer cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining more than one drug may kill more cancer cells.

This clinical trial studies fludarabine phosphate, low-dose total-body irradiation, and peripheral blood stem cell transplant followed by donor lymphocyte infusion in treating older patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. Giving chemotherapy and total-body irradiation before a donor bone marrow transplant helps stop the growth of cancer cells. It may also stop the patient's immune system from rejecting the donor's stem cells. When the healthy stem cells from a donor are infused into the patient they may help the patient's bone marrow make stem cells, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Sometimes the transplanted cells from a donor can make an immune response against the body's normal cells. Giving cyclosporine and mycophenolate mofetil after the transplant may stop this from happening. Once the donated stem cells begin working, the patient's immune system may see the remaining cancer cells as not belonging in the patient's body and destroy them (called graft-versus-tumor effect). Giving an infusion of the donor's white blood cells (donor lymphocyte infusion) may boost this effect.

To determine the safety and efficacy of decitabine in patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukemia accelerated phase that were previously treated with imatinib mesylate (STI 571) and became resistant/refractory or were found to be intolerant to the drug.

Relapsed disease is the most common cause of death in children with hematological malignancies. Patients who fail high-intensity conventional chemotherapeutic regimens or relapse after stem cell transplantation have a poor prognosis. Toxicity from multiple therapies and elevated leukemic/tumor burden usually make these patients ineligible for the aggressive chemotherapy regimens required for conventional stem cell transplantation. Alternative options are needed. One type of treatment being explored is called haploidentical transplant. Conventional blood or bone marrow stem cell transplant involves destroying the patient's diseased marrow with radiation or chemotherapy. Healthy marrow from a donor is then infused into the patient where it migrates to the bone marrow space to begin generating new blood cells. The best type of donor is a sibling or unrelated donor with an identical immune system (HLA "match"). However, most patients do not have a matched sibling available and/or are unable to identify an acceptable unrelated donor through the registries in a timely manner. In addition, the aggressive treatment required to prepare the body for these types of transplants can be too toxic for these highly pretreated patients. Therefore doctors are investigating haploidentical transplant using stem cells from HLA partially matched family member donors. Although haploidentical transplant has proven curative in many patients, this procedure has been hindered by significant complications, primarily regimen-related toxicity including graft versus host disease (GVHD), and infection due to delayed immune reconstitution. These can, in part, be due to certain white blood cells in the graft called T cells. GVHD happens when the donor T cells recognize the patient's (the host) body tissues are different and attack these cells. Although too many T cells increase the possibility of GVHD, too few may cause the recipient's immune system to reconstitute slowly or the graft to fail to grow, leaving the patient at high-risk for infection. However, the presence of T cells in the graft may offer a positive effect called graft versus malignancy or GVM. With GVM, the donor T cells recognize the patient's malignant cells as diseased and, in turn, attack these diseased cells. For these reasons, a primary focus for researchers is to engineer the graft to provide a T cell depleted product to reduce the risk of GVHD, yet provide a sufficient number of cells to facilitate immune reconstitution, graft integrity and GVM. In this study, patients were given a haploidentical graft engineered to with specific T cell parameter values using the CliniMACS system. A reduced intensity, preparative regimen was used to reduce regimen-related toxicity and mortality. The primary goal of this study is to evaluate overall survival in those who receive this study treatment.

During the Core Phase of the study, participants received STI571 at a dose of 400 milligrams (mg) daily for up to 12 months. Participants completing 12 months of therapy were eligible to continue treatment in the Extension Phase of the study provided that, in the opinion of the investigator, they had benefited from treatment with STI571 and there were no safety concerns.

The study will assess the role of high-dose imatinib mesylate, in patients who have taken imatinib mesylate for at least 1 year at the standard dose, in achieving a major molecular response (a measure of the level of chronic myelogenous leukemia) versus the standard dose.

The goal of this clinical research study is to find the highest safe doses of PTK 787 (vatalanib) and Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) that can be given to treat Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia-Blastic Phase (CML-BP), Refractory Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), or Agnogenic Myeloid Metaplasia (AMM). Another goal is to see how effective this combination treatment is.

Description: The trial is designed to determine the response of the immune system of patients with CML to a vaccine made from their own tumor. Researchers believe that this particular vaccine, which is made from purified heat shock proteins taken from each patient's tumor, alerts the body's immune system to recognize and attack invading cancer. To be considered potentially eligible for this study you must have CML in the chronic phase. Length/Duration: Vaccinations will be administered weekly for eight weeks. One clinic follow up visit will be scheduled two weeks after the final vaccination.

Drugs used in chemotherapy such as CCI-779 work in different ways to stop cancer cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. This phase II trial is studying how well CCI-779 works in treating patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, or chronic myelogenous leukemia in blastic phase