17 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
This study will evaluate the safety and usefulness of a new immunosuppressive drug, alemtuzumab (Campath ), in patients with severe aplastic anemia (SAA). SAA is a rare and serious blood disorder in which the bone marrow stops making red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Alemtuzumab is a monoclonal antibody that attaches to and kills white blood cells called lymphocytes. In certain types of aplastic anemia, lymphocytes are responsible for the destruction of stem cells in the bone marrow, leading to a decrease in blood counts. Because alemtuzumab destroys lymphocytes, it may be effective in treating aplastic anemia. Alemtuzumab is currently approved to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia and is also helpful in other conditions that require immunosuppression, such as rheumatoid arthritis and immune cytopenias. Patients 2 years of age and older with severe aplastic anemia whose disease does not respond to immunosuppressive therapy or has recurred following immunosuppressive therapy may be eligible for this study. Participants undergo the following tests and procedures: * Pretreatment evaluation: Patients have a medical history, physical examination, blood tests, electrocardiogram (EKG), echocardiogram, 24-hour Holter monitor (continuous 24-hour monitoring of electrical activity of the heart), bone marrow biopsy (withdrawal through a needle of a small sample of bone marrow for analysis). * Placement of a central line, if needed: An intravenous line (tube) is placed into a major vein in the patient's chest. It can stay in the body for the entire treatment period and be used to give chemotherapy or other medications, including antibiotics and blood transfusions, if needed, and to withdraw blood samples. * Alemtuzumab therapy: Patients are admitted to the NIH Clinical Center for the first few injections for close monitoring of side effects. After receiving an initial small test dose, patients begin the first of ten daily injections under the skin, each lasting about 2 hours. Once patients tolerate the infusions with minimal or no side effects, they may be given the remaining infusions on an outpatient basis. Patients who relapse after their initial response to alemtuzumab are given cyclosporine to see if this drug will boost their immune response. * Patients receive transfusions, growth factors, and antibiotic therapy, as needed. * Infection therapy: Patients are given aerosolized pentamidine to protect against lung infections and valacyclovir to protect against herpes infections. * A blood test is done and vital signs are measured every day while patients receive alemtuzumab. * Patients have an echocardiogram and 24-hour Holter monitor after the last dose of alemtuzumab. * Blood tests are done weekly for the first 3 months after alemtuzumab administration, then every other week until 6 months. Patients return to the NIH for follow-up visits 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and yearly for 5 years after the last dose of alemtuzumab for the following tests and evaluations: * Blood test * Repeat echocardiogram at 3-month visit * Repeat bone marrow biopsy 6 months and 12 months after alemtuzumab, then as clinically indicated for 5 years.
Due to an overall and disease free survival of 85% to 100%, allogeneic blood or bone marrow stem cell transplantation using an HLA matched sibling donor is the therapy of choice for patients with severe aplastic anemia (SAA). Unfortunately, only about 25% of patients have such a donor. For patients with SAA lacking a matched sibling donor, immunosuppressive therapy is the current treatment of choice. Approximately 70% of these patients have a complete or partial response to immunosuppressive therapy, achieving transfusion independence and/or growth factor independence. For the approximately 30% of patients who do not respond to immunosuppressive therapy or experience recurrence, alternative donor (matched unrelated, partially matched family member) transplantation is a treatment option. However, graft rejection and graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) are significant barriers to success, decreasing event-free survival to 30% to 50%. This study offers stem cell transplantation using a partially matched family member (haploidentical) donor to those patients with no available HLA-matched sibling or matched unrelated donor. In an attempt to reduce GVHD and regimen-related toxicity while maintaining adequate engraftment, we plan to infuse a highly purified stem cell graft. The Miltenyi Biotec CliniMACS CD3 depletion system will be used to derive a defined allogeneic graft highly enriched for CD34+ hematopoietic cells and depleted of CD3+ T-lymphocytes from G-CSF mobilized, donor-derived peripheral blood stem cells. Patients 21 years of age and younger with refractory cytopenias are also eligible for this protocol as there are no other potentially curative therapies currently available for these conditions. The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the safety of transplantation using a haploidentical donor product engineered to targeted cell counts using the investigational CliniMACS device for patients with refractory severe aplastic anemia (SAA) or refractory cytopenias. The treatment plan would be considered unsafe if we can find this type of procedure is associated with a significantly higher treatment failure rate. Treatment failure is defined as any occurrence of the following events, overall grade III-IV acute GVHD, graft failure or death due to any cause within 100 days after transplant.
This study is researching an experimental drug called REGN7257 (called "study drug"). The study is focused on patients who have severe aplastic anemia (SAA), a disease of the bone marrow resulting in an impairment of the production of blood cells. The main purpose of this two-part study (Part A and Part B) is to test how safe and tolerable REGN7257 is in patients with SAA in which other Immunosuppressive therapies (ISTs) have not worked well. The study is looking at several other research questions to better understand the following properties of REGN7257: * Side effects that may be experienced by participants taking REGN7257 * How REGN7257 works in the body * How much REGN7257 is present in blood after dosing * If REGN7257 works to raise levels of certain blood counts after treatment * How quickly REGN7257 works to raise levels of certain blood counts * In patients for whom REGN7257 works to raise levels of certain blood counts after treatment, how many continue to show such a response throughout the study * If REGN7257 works to lower the number of platelet and red blood cell transfusions needed * How REGN7257 changes immune cell counts and composition * How the body reacts to REGN7257 and if it produces proteins that bind to REGN7257 (this would be called the formation of anti-drug antibodies \[ADA\])
This Phase II open-label interventional clinical trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of romiplostim, in patients with severe aplastic anemia (SAA), both treatment naïve and relapsed/refractory, in inducing trilineage hematopoiesis in children and young adults.
Our primary objective is to determine if it is feasible for SAA patients to be transplanted using non-myeloablative conditioning and post transplantation cyclophosphamide with partially HLA-mismatched donors.
Patients with severe, refractory aplastic anemia have a severe, life threatening disease in their bone marrow. Refractory disease means that disease has come back or not responded after receiving one or more immunosuppressive treatments. High dose chemotherapy followed by bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has been used to treat blood diseases like aplastic anemia but complications from Graft vs Host disease (GVHD) and graft failure have limited the survival for those patients. Another study done here at Johns Hopkins has shown that in patients with other diseases (blood cancers) some immunosuppressive drugs given after the BMT has decreased how often patients had complications of GVHD and engraftment failure. This research is being done to find if this approach will help patients with aplastic anemia who have failed other treatments will have better outcomes.
Background: * Severe aplastic anemia (SAA) can lead to problems with bone marrow health and result in low blood cell counts, which require frequent transfusions. Standard initial treatment for SAA involves injections of antithymocyte globulin (ATG) plus cyclosporine (CsA). Patients with SAA who do not respond to initial treatment with ATG (refractory) have a high risk of dying without additional treatment. In these cases, for those who do not have a matched bone marrow transplant donor there is no well-defined standard therapy. In our experience with patients who do not respond to horse ATG + CsA, only about one-third of patients who are re-treated with rabbit ATG + CsA improve. Experience with cyclophosphamide in the treatment of refractory severe aplastic anemia suggests that this drug is able to improve blood counts in about 50% of cases. However, the cyclophosphamide regimen has been associated with a significant infection risk (mostly caused by fungus) in studies conducted over 10 years ago due to the lowering of the white blood cell levels. * Better antibiotic drugs against fungus have been developed and are widely used to treat patients who have low white blood cell counts and are at risk of developing infections. In SAA patients in particular, these newer antibiotics have had a large impact in preventing and treating fungus infections. Researchers are revisiting the use of cyclophosphamide at lower doses to minimize its side effects given in combination with another immune suppressant, fludarabine. Objectives: - To determine the safety and effectiveness of the combination of fludarabine plus cyclophosphamide in treating severe aplastic anemia that has not responded to initial treatments.
This phase I trial evaluates the safety and feasibility of using a reduced-intensity regimen of cyclophosphamide, pentostatin, and anti-thymocyte globulin prior to a CD4+ T-cell depleted haploidentical hematopoietic cell transplant (haploHCT) for the treatment of patients with severe aplastic anemia that does not respond to treatment (refractory) or that has come back (recurrent). Cyclophosphamide is in a class of medications called alkylating agents. It works by damaging the cell's deoxyribonucleic acid. It may also lower the body's immune response. Pentostatin blocks a protein needed for cell growth. Anti-thymocyte globulin is an immunosuppressive drug can destroy immune cells known as T-cells. HaploHCT transfers blood-forming stem cells from a healthy partially-matched donor to a patient. Administering a regimen of cyclophosphamide, pentostatin, and anti-thymocyte globulin before haploHCT may help make room for the new, healthy cells and may reduce the risk of graft versus host disease.
Background: Immune bone marrow failure is a condition that occurs when a person s immune system attacks the cells of the bone marrow. This can lead to diseases including different types of anemias and blood cancers. Some of these diseases can be deadly. Better treatments are needed. Objective: To test a drug (ruxolitinib) in people with different types of immune bone marrow failure. Eligibility: Adults aged 18 and older with an immune bone marrow failure. Design: Participants will be screened. They will have a physical exam. They will give samples of blood and saliva. They will have a bone marrow biopsy: A large needle will be inserted into a small cut to remove a sample of the soft tissue inside the bone. Some participants may have a skin biopsy: A small piece of skin will be removed. Some may have a computed tomography (CT) scan: They will lie on a table that slides into a donut-shaped machine that uses X-rays to make pictures of the inside of the body. Ruxolitinib is a tablet taken by mouth. Participants will take the drug twice a day for up to 6 months. Participants will have blood tests every week while they are taking the drug. These tests can be done by the participant s own physician and the results sent to the researchers. Participants will have clinic visits after taking the drug for 3 months and 6 months and then after 1, 2, and 3 years. The blood tests and bone marrow biopsy will be repeated. Participants who improve while taking the drugs may go on to an extension phase of the study.
This is a phase II, open label, multi-center, intra-patient dose escalation study to characterize the pharmacokinetics (PK) after oral administration of eltrombopag in combination with immunosuppressive therapy in pediatric patients with previously untreated or relapsed/refractory severe aplastic anemia or recurrent aplastic anemia.
Aplastic Anemia (AA) is an autoimmune hematologic stem cell disease mediated by activated T-lymphocytes that leads to pancytopenia. The disease related morbidity and mortality if left untreated can approach 90%. For over 30 years, anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) in combination with cyclosporine (CsA) remains the standard therapy. However, the treatment response with ATG is at best between 50-60% with a sizeable number of partial responses. Treatment with ATG is also associated with significant toxicity and high relapse rate that can be as high as 45%. Since the prognosis in refractory and relapsed AA remains poor, there is a need for less toxic novel immunosuppressive agents that can improve response rates and remission duration in refractory and relapsed AA. Alefacept is a human recombinant dimeric fusion protein composed of the terminal portion of leukocyte functioning antigen-3 (LFA3/CD58) and the Fc portion of human IgG1. It prevents co-stimulatory signals between antigen presenting cells and memory T cells by competitive inhibition of CD2 in T cells, induces selective apoptosis of CD4+ and CD8+ memory effector T cells by interaction between the Fc portion of IgG1 and the FcyIII in NK cells, and possibly direct ligation of CD2 molecules on T cells that subsequently result in the alteration in T cell agonist signaling. It has been used successfully in the treatment of other T cell mediated disorders particularly psoriasis and steroid refractory graft versus host disease (GVHD) with minimal side effects. In a case of liver transplant associated AA (similar to transfusion associated AA) which is fatal in most patients, Alefacept induced remission after patient did not respond to ATG and other immunosuppressants. The investigators hypothesize that the LFA3-CD2 co-stimulatory pathway play an important role in the immune pathogenesis of AA and treatment with Alefacept can help treat refractory/relapsed cases of AA.
This study will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of treating patients with severe aplastic anemia (SAA) or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) with both peripheral blood stem cells from a family member and umbilical cord blood stem cells from an unrelated donor. Patients with SAA or MDS for whom other treatments have failed or are not available may be eligible for this study. Candidates may not have a tissue-matched sibling or matched unrelated donor and must have a family member who is a partial tissue type match. Participants undergo the following tests and procedures: * Insertion of a central intravenous (IV) line (plastic tube) into a large vein. The tube is used for giving the donated stem cells and antibiotics and other medicines, for transfusions of red blood cells and platelets, and for collecting blood samples. * Preparatory chemotherapy (fludarabine, cyclophosphamide and anti-thymocyte globulin) and total body irradiation to suppress immunity and prevent rejection of the donated cells. * Infusion of the donated stem cells and umbilical cord cells. * Immune suppression with the drugs tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil and prednisone to prevent rejection of the donated cells and to prevent graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a complication of stem cell transplants in which the donors immune cells destroy the patients healthy tissues. The average hospital stay after stem cell transplantation is 3 to 4 weeks. Patients return for frequent follow-up visits for the first 2 to 4 months after transplantation. Once the patient returns home, his or her referring physician is asked to send results of any laboratory testing to the NIH researchers at least every 3 months for the first 3 years and annually thereafter. Patient follow-up visits are scheduled at NIH at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 years after transplantation to monitor for signs of disease or post-transplantation complications, such as infection or GVHD. After 5 years, participants are offered the opportunity to enroll in NHLBIs long-term evaluation and follow-up care protocol.
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop cancer cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Umbilical cord blood transplantation may be able to replace cells destroyed by chemotherapy. PURPOSE: Phase I trial to study the effectiveness of combination chemotherapy followed by umbilical cord blood transplantation in treating patients who have hematologic cancer or severe aplastic anemia.
This phase II trial studies how well fludarabine phosphate, cyclophosphamide, total body irradiation, and donor stem cell transplant work in treating patients with blood cancer. Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as fludarabine phosphate and cyclophosphamide, work in different ways to stop the growth of cancer cells, either by killing the cells, by stopping them from dividing, or by stopping them from spreading. Radiation therapy uses high energy x-rays to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Giving chemotherapy and total-body irradiation before a donor peripheral blood stem cell transplant helps stop the growth of cells in the bone marrow, including normal blood-forming cells (stem cells) and 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. The donated stem cells may also replace the patient?s immune cells and help destroy any remaining cancer cells.
New conditioning regimens are still needed to maximize efficacy and limit treatment-related deaths of allogeneic transplantation for advanced hematologic malignancies. Over the past several years, the investigators have evaluated several new conditioning regimens that incorporate fludarabine, a novel immunosuppressant that has limited toxicity and that has synergistic activity with alkylating agents. Recent data have suggested that fludarabine may be used in combination with standard doses of oral or IV busulfan, thus reducing the toxicity previously observed with cyclophosphamide/ busulfan regimens.
Objectives: 1. To evaluate disease free survival after Campath 1H-based in vivo T-cell depletion and non-myelo-ablative ablative stem cell transplantation in patients with hematologic malignancies. 2. To evaluate the incidence and severity of acute and chronic GVHD after Campath 1H-based in vivo T-cell depletion, in patients with hematologic malignancies undergoing non-myelo-ablative stem cell transplantation. 3. To evaluate engraftment and chimerism after Campath 1H-based in vivo T-cell depletion and non-myelo-ablative ablative stem cell transplantation in patients with hematologic malignancies.
This phase II trial studies how well giving fludarabine phosphate, melphalan, and low-dose total-body irradiation (TBI) followed by donor peripheral blood stem cell transplant (PBSCT) works in treating patients with hematologic malignancies. Giving chemotherapy drugs such as fludarabine phosphate and melphalan, and low-dose TBI before a donor PBSCT helps stop the growth of cancer and abnormal cells and helps stop the patient's immune system from rejecting the donor's stem cells. When the healthy stem cells from the 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 cell from a donor can make an immune response against the body's normal cells. Giving tacrolimus, mycophenolate mofetil (MMF), and methotrexate after transplant may stop this from happening