Active clinical trials for "Neoplasm Metastasis"

A minority of patients with colorectal liver metastases and hepatobiliary cancer (primary liver cancer) are candidates for surgery, but there are no curative treatment options for these patients. Their median survival time is 3 to 12 months. Stereotactic radiation (SRT) (highly conformal radiotherapy (CRT)) is a treatment option for these patients with unresectable liver cancer, now possible due to improvements in our ability to localize and immobilize liver tumors and an improved understanding of the partial liver volume tolerance to radiation. SRT should permit liver tumors to be treated to tumorcidal doses while sparing the uninvolved liver, decreasing the risk of treatment related normal tissue toxicity. With such conformal radiation, it is possible to deliver radiation in fewer fractions than traditionally required, which should be more convenient for patients. In this study, CRT will be delivered during shallow breathing or breath hold to minimize organ motion due to breathing, decreasing the volume of normal liver that must be irradiated.

This international study will study how metastatic breast cancer responds to the investigational drug treatment, what are the side effects of the investigational drug when given to women with metastatic breast cancer and how often do these side effects occur. The study will also analyze how fast investigational drug and its breakdown products are cleared from the blood in these patients.

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.

This study examines surgery versus radiosurgery (highly focussed radiation) for the treatment of cancer which has spread to one spot in the brain (solitary brain "metastasis"). For these two treatment options, it will compare patients' survival times, quality of life, control rate of the brain metastases and side effects. It uses the most rigorous scientific method available called "randomisation" which minimises biases that exist with other types of studies. It will involve 30 - 40 patients.

This trial is designed to investigate the safety, tolerability and the effectiveness when OSI-774 (tarceva) is combined with oxaliplatin and capecitabine in treating patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Radiation treatment is often used to treat cancer that has spread to the abdomen. It can be very effective at relieving symptoms such as pain, but the radiotherapy itself can cause side-effects such as cramping and diarrhea. This study will investigate whether it is possible to reduce the unwanted side-effects of radiotherapy with a new technology called "helical tomotherapy". Tomotherapy is a new way to deliver radiation in a much more accurate fashion than is currently done, and with less radiation being delivered to normal tissues around the tumor. This study will involve the treatment of 20 patients, who have a spread of their cancer within the abdomen and pelvis, using helical tomotherapy. The dose and energy of radiation will be the same as is currently used - only the delivery system is different. The purpose is to assure that tomotherapy is a safe way to deliver radiation treatment and to investigate whether it will reduce the toxicity of radiation treatment in these patients. Patients will be treated in groups of three until all 20 have been treated. The toxicity of treatment will be measured with a questionnaire for each one. If any unexpected severe treatment complications occur, further accrual will stop.

Despite recent advances, most patients with advanced colorectal cancer continue to have a poor prognosis. 5-FU, leucovorin, oxaliplatin and bevacizumab is a standard treatment option for patients with stage IV colorectal cancer. Fluorouracil (5-FU), leucovorin and oxaliplatin are considered traditional chemotherapies that try to stop tumor growth by affecting how they divide. Bevacizumab is a therapy to try to block the blood vessels that tumors need to grow. It is considered a 'targeted agent'. Erlotinib is another targeted agent, that has been shown to be effective in treating lung and other cancers. This trial is assessing the potential benefit of adding these second targeted agents to standard treatment.

RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a gene-modified virus and a person's white blood cells may make the body build an effective immune response to kill tumor cells. Biological therapies, such as Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), may stimulate the immune system in different ways and stop tumor cells from growing. Combining different types of biological therapies may kill more tumor cells. PURPOSE: This randomized phase II trial is studying giving vaccine therapy together with dendritic cells to see how well it works compared to giving vaccine therapy together with GM-CSF in treating patients with liver or lung metastases from colorectal cancer removed by surgery.

The purpose of this trial is to determine the effectiveness of AMG 162 in reducing urinary N-telopeptide in advanced cancer subjects with bone metastases.

RSR13 (efaproxiral) is a radiation sensitizer that has shown positive results in a Phase 3, randomized clinical trial of patients with brain metastases. Of 111 eligible breast cancer patients with brain metastases in that trial, 59 patients who received RSR13 prior to radiation therapy had a median survival time that was twice as long as the 52 patients who did not receive RSR13 prior to radiation therapy. RSR13 (efaproxiral) is an experimental drug that increases the amount of oxygen released from blood into the tissues. It is well known that certain types of cancer tumors, including those in brain metastases, lack oxygen. Lack of oxygen in a tumor can reduce the effect of radiation therapy (RT). RSR13 may increase the oxygen level in brain tumors so that radiation therapy works better. This study will enroll up to 360 women with brain metastases from breast cancer, and will evaluate if whole brain radiation therapy given with RSR13 will have a better treatment effect than whole brain radiation therapy alone. RSR13 will be infused intravenously (IV) through a central catheter placed in a central vein. Women randomized (assigned) to receive RSR13, therefore, will need to have a central catheter placed for treatment unless one is already in place.