Active clinical trials for "Carcinoma, Squamous Cell"

This is an open label, monocentric, uncontrolled phase II trial with Dacomitinib, a pan-HER inhibitor, in unresectable or metastatic skin SCC. HER2 expression is common in skin SCC, being reported with high rates, even if in small studies. Coexpression of EGFR, HER2 and HER3 is present in skin SCCs but not in normal skin and it could be associated with the malignant phenotype. In this frame Dacomitinib could play a role in the increase of the response rate.

This study will compare TNFE-NBI and biopsy, with DRE and biopsy for the diagnostic evaluation and staging of patients with suspicious UADT lesions. All patients enrolled in the study will undergo TNFE-NBI with biopsy of suspicious lesions prior to planned regular clinical care (DRE). Biopsies will be evaluated by standard clinical methods for patient diagnoses and care. As the current standard of care, if all biopsies for a given patient are non-malignant, a 3 month office visit will be arranged to evaluate and determine the need for further intervention. At the end of study enrollment both sets of biopsies will be re-evaluated in a blinded fashion by the surgical pathologist. Study assessment of malignant vs. non-malignant (benign) pathology will be used to see whether both tests tended to agree on diagnoses.

The aim of this trial is to compare the accelerated fractionation radiotherapy and concurrent chemo-radiotherapy in locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients in terms of loco-regional control, toxicities and quality of life.

To examine the safety and toxicity of concurrent radiotherapy with cisplatin with the further addition of cetuximab experimental treatment

Controversy over surgical treatment of clinically negative neck in early stage oral squamous cell carcinoma revolves around the uncertainty of its impact on patient prognosis. The efficacy of elective neck dissection on prognosis in T1, 2 N0M0 patients continues to be the subject of clinical debate. Currently the clinically negative patients are treated by one of the two main policies: one is elective neck dissection; the other is "watchful waiting". The objective of this multi-institutional prospective randomized controlled study is to evaluate the survival benefit of elective neck dissection on the prognosis of T1, 2 N0M0 patients with carcinoma of oral cavity. The enrolled patients with T1, 2 N0M0 oral cancer will be randomized into two groups: elective neck dissection versus watch and wait. The survival rate and the recurrence rate between two groups will be compared. The result of the study will give surgeons evidence-based instructions for the management of clinically negative neck in patients with cancer of oral cavity.

Until today, the 5-FU/cisplatin combination is the reference regimen with 30-45% response rates, which is most commonly used to treat patients with metastatic, recurrent or locally advanced, unresectable squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus. Because the classical dose schedule of this two-drug combination is cisplatin 100 mg/m2 day 1 and 5-FU 1000 mg/m2/day continuous infusion for 96-120 hr, prolonged administration time and mucosal toxicity are inconvenient to the patients with the aim of palliation. Capecitabine, which is oral prodrug of 5-FU and mimic continuously-infused 5-FU, is being investigated in phase I, II and III trials for the treatment of gastric, gastroesophageal, and esophageal cancers, primarily in the first-line metastatic setting. In our experience, capecitabine plus cisplatin combination (XP) as a first-line treatment for 45 patients with advanced or recurrent esophageal squamous cell carcinoma demonstrated a promising anti-tumor activity with 57% of response rate and showed tolerable toxicity with convenience. Paclitaxel has been also investigated as monotherapy and in combination with cisplatin in patients with advanced esophageal cancer. A Dutch phase II study demonstrated that paclitaxel combination with carboplatin had shown an encouraging confirmed response rate of 59% with 51 patients with resectable esophageal cancer in neoadjuvant setting. Another Dutch phase II study showed 43% of response rate including 4% of CR with 8 months of response duration when paclitaxel plus cisplatin administration was given for patients with metastatic esophageal cancer. Although recently first-line palliative chemotherapy regimen in esophageal cancer has been investigated, many trials have failed to show superiority to 5-FU/cisplatin combination. Since we considered that XP or XT is more effective and convenient chemotherapy regimen than 5-FU/cisplatin, this randomized phase II study was planned to compare XP with XT in terms of efficacy and tolerability.

Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessel from existing vessels, is essential for tumor growth and metastasis. Antiangiogenic therapies inhibit the growth of genetically stable endothelial cells, and most tumors should starve to death with little acquired resistance. Endostatin has been shown to block endothelial cell proliferation, survival, and migration. Antitumor activity of endostatin protein has been demonstrated in various murine and human tumors in animal model studies without any detectable toxicity. Endostatin gene therapy could directly express the highly bioactive protein in vivo by means of the mechanism of eukaryotic expression system as post-translational modification and folding, as well as overcoming the challenge of the long-term storage and the cumbersome daily administration of endostatin protein. E10A is a replication-deficient recombinant adenovirus containing a wild-type human endostatin transgene constructed from serotype 5 adenovirus (Ad5). Preclinical studies demonstrated that intratumoral injection of E10A provided significant tumor growth inhibition and sustained elevation of endostatin in blood and tumor tissue in hepatocellular carcinoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and tongue cancer animal models. A Phase I clinical trial of E10A we conducted showed that repetitive intratumoral injection of E10A resulted in a small and sustained elevation of endostatin in blood and had a mild antitumor activities with very limited toxicity. The major toxicity was transient and manageable fever. A randomized Phase III trial in nonsmall-cell lung cancer showed endostatin improved response rate and time to tumor progression in combination to chemotherapy. Therefore, we designed a randomized phase II trial to explore the safety and effectiveness of E10A combined with chemotherapy in the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer.

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.

The purpose of this clinical research study is to answer the following questions using 18F-fluoromisonidazole as an imaging agent: Do cells exist in human tumors that are at very low oxygen levels (hypoxic cells)? If hypoxic cells exist in human tumors, do they effect the ability of radiotherapy to control human tumors? Can Positron Emission Tomography (PET scanning) detect hypoxic cells in human tumors?

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.