Active clinical trials for "Melanoma"

RATIONALE: Vaccines may make the body build an immune response to kill melanoma cells. PURPOSE: Phase I/II trial to study the effectiveness of vaccine therapy in treating patients with metastatic melanoma.

RATIONALE: Vaccines may make the body build an immune response to kill tumor cells. It is not yet known whether vaccine therapy is more effective than observation alone for melanoma. PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying vaccine therapy to see how well it works compared to observation alone in treating patients with primary stage II melanoma.

RATIONALE: Vaccines may make the body build an immune response to kill tumor cells. PURPOSE: Phase I/II trial to study the effectiveness of vaccine therapy in treating patients who have stage II, stage III, or stage IV melanoma.

The purpose of this study is to assess post operative pain following the insertion of radioactive plaque for choroidal melanoma in patients after receiving either ibuprofen or tramadol.

This study evaluates the safety, the immunological response and the clinical outcome of a vaccination with survivin peptides for patients with advanced melanoma, pancreatic, colon and cervical carcinoma.

RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as dacarbazine, use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Oblimersen may help dacarbazine kill more tumor cells by making them more sensitive to the drug. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying how well giving oblimersen together with dacarbazine works in treating patients with advanced malignant melanoma that previously responded to treatment with oblimersen and dacarbazine on clinical trial GENTA-GM301.

RATIONALE: Interferon alfa may interfere with the growth of the cancer cells. It is not yet known if this treatment is more effective than observation following surgery for stage III melanoma. PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to determine the effectiveness of interferon alfa in treating patients who have undergone surgery for stage III melanoma.

In this clinical feasibility study the investigators will test and compare two advanced optical imaging technologies, lipid and RNA tape stripping with regards to diagnostic accuracies for fast bedside diagnosis of pigmented skin tumours.

This pilot clinical trial studies intravital microscopy in identifying tumor vessels in patients with stage IB-IIIC melanoma undergoing sentinel lymph node biopsy. By examining sentinel lymph nodes through intravital microscopy before they are removed, doctors may learn specific information regarding how melanoma may spread to lymph nodes and other sites of the body.

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is crucial in the management of malignant melanoma treatment and is currently performed by pre-operatively inject a colloid nanomaterial labeled with Technetium (99mTc) as radioactive tracer. Intra-operatively, Patent Blue (PB) will be injected to improve the visualization of the lymphatic tract. However, current pre-operative SLN mapping technique, is associated with disadvantages as radiation exposure for both patients and health care personnel and logistic challenges, because of time constraints due to short half-live time of 99mTc. Superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) is novel, non-radioactive technique using a magnetic tracer (Magtrace® (Endomagnetics Ltd.)) and several studies showed that SPIO is non-inferior to dual tracing with 99mTc and PB in breast cancer patients. SPIO is expected to be non-inferior to dual tracing with 99mTc and PB in melanoma patients. However, further research is needed to demonstrate the use of SPIO in pre-operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning. Guidance on pre-operative MRI use is rather limited, though fundamental in the intended research process. Hence, the aim of this subprotocol study, which includes healthy subjects, is to develop a pre-operative MRI protocol for melanoma patients. The acquired knowledge will be used to design a feasibility study, including a larger group of melanoma patients.