10 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The investigators hypothesize that intensification of local therapy will lead to improvements in local control and survival in patients with unresectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer. We propose to do this by combining nab-paclitaxel concurrently with dose-escalated radiation therapy. In the first part of this phase I study (sub-trial 1), the nab-paclitaxel dose will be escalated while the radiation dose is held constant at a standardly accepted level. The use of this novel chemoradiotherapy regimen will take advantage of nab-paclitaxel's specific anti-tumor and anti-stromal properties, which may enhance the efficacy of radiation therapy, and thereby improve local control. After the MTD of nab-paclitaxel had been determined, a second arm in sub-trial 1 will evaluate the addition of paricalcitol to nab-paclitaxel concurrently with dose-escalated radiation therapy. In addition, after the MTD of the nab-paclitaxel is reached in sub-trial 1 arm A, in the second part of this study (sub-trial 2), we will administer nab-paclitaxel at the determined MTD concurrently with escalated doses of radiation. We will utilize IMRT or protons to safely deliver high doses of radiation while maximally sparing surrounding normal tissue. Patients will also preferentially have 2-3 fiducial markers placed in or around the tumor for daily localization. Chemotherapy before and/or after chemoradiotherapy may be given as per standard of care. Correlative tissue and serum biomarkers are an important, but optional, part of this study.
Background: Fewer than 10 percent of people with pancreas cancer can have surgery. Surgery gives the best outcome. Radiation therapy is usually used to make surgery possible. But it does not work for most people. Adding immunotherapy might help. Objective: To find a safe combined dose of Bintrafusp Alfa (M7824), NHS-IL12 (M9241, and radiation and to see if it causes pancreas cancer tumors to shrink. Eligibility: People ages 18 and older who have pancreas cancer and cannot have curative surgery Design: Participants will be screened under protocol 01-C-0129 with: Medical history Physical exam Heart, urine, and blood tests Scans. For this, participants will lie in a machine that takes pictures of the body. They may receive a contrast agent by vein. Possible tumor biopsy Participants will take the study drugs either alone or with radiation. They will get M7824 by vein every 2 weeks. They will get M9241 injected under the skin every 4 weeks. Participants who get radiation will get it 5 days in a row the first month. Participants will have visits every 2 weeks. They will repeat screening tests. If participants tumors shrink, they will have surgery. If their whole tumor is removed, they will stop treatment. They will otherwise continue treatment as long as they can tolerate it and it is helping them. Participants will have visits 1 week and 1 month after they stop treatment. Then they will be contacted by phone or email for life. If they stop treatment for a reason other than their disease getting worse, they will have scans every 12 weeks.
This single arm, multi-center phase II clinical trial will assess the safety and efficacy of FOLFIRINOX in the first-line setting in patients with unresectable locally advanced (ULA) and borderline resectable (BR) pancreatic cancer.
The prognosis for patients with localized pancreatic adenocarcinoma who are not surgical candidates is poor. Patients characterized as having "borderline resectable" disease treated with preoperative chemo-radiotherapy fair somewhat better - although many of these patients are not converted to resectability. It may be argued that intensification of local and regional therapy might 1.) Increase the share of patients able to undergo curative surgery and 2.) Improve the local disease control interval and extend survival for patients who remain unresectable. Therefore, the purpose of this research study is to determine if an increase in the number of surgical resection pancreatic adenocarcinoma is higher than historical data by using a combined treatment of proton radiation with capecitabine (oral chemotherapy).
GTI-4711-201 is designed as a Phase 2b, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to determine the effect to OS by adding GC4711 to SBRT following chemotherapy in patients with unresectable or borderline resectable nonmetastatic
Background: - Pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat because by the time most cases are diagnosed, the tumors are too large to be removed surgically. Standard intravenous chemotherapy may shrink some of the tumor, but even with chemotherapy only about 25 percent of patients will live for 1 year following diagnosis. Several preliminary studies have shown that it is safe to give chemotherapy directly into the pancreas in the area of the tumor, and that giving gemcitabine over a longer period increases the amount of drug that is available to the tumor. Researchers are interested in studying whether giving the approved pancreatic cancer chemotherapy drug gemcitabine directly into the pancreas in the area of the cancer and at a slow rate of infusion is a safe and effective treatment. Objectives: - To test the safety and effectiveness of administering gemcitabine directly to a pancreatic tumor at a slow rate of infusion. Eligibility: - Individuals at least 18 years of age who have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that is currently too large to be removed surgically but has not yet spread to other organs. Design: * Participants will be screened with a full medical history and physical examination, blood and urine tests, and imaging studies. * Participants will undergo pancreatic angiography and embolization, during which a catheter will be threaded into the blood vessels near the pancreas and a contrast dye will be used to show the blood vessels supplying the tumor. These blood vessels will then be surgically closed off. * After the embolization, gemcitabine will be given as an infusion into the area around the tumor over 24 hours. * Participants will return to the clinical center every 2 weeks after the first infusion for additional infusions of gemcitabine, using the same procedures as above. Participants will be monitored with frequent blood tests and imaging studies. * Two weeks after the fourth treatment (course 1), participants will have more imaging studies, a physical examination, and blood tests. If the tumor is shrinking, participants will have two more courses of treatment (eight more infusions of gemcitabine). * Participants will have followup visits every 3 months for 2 years following the last treatment and then every 6 months.
This phase II trial evaluates whether early switching from modified fluorouracil/irinotecan/leucovorin/oxaliplatin (mFOLFIRINOX) chemotherapy regimen to a combination of gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel (GA) before surgery is effective in treating patients with pancreatic cancer that can be surgically removed (resectable or borderline resectable), or that has spread to nearby tissue or lymph nodes and cannot be removed by surgery (locally-advanced unresectable). Chemotherapy drugs, such as fluorouracil, irinotecan, leucovorin, oxaliplatin, gemcitabine, and nab-paclitaxel work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells, by stopping them from dividing, or by stopping them from spreading. The study will also evaluate the drug losartan in combination with mFOLFIRINOX or GA.
This phase I trial studies the side effects of losartan and hypofractionated radiation therapy after chemotherapy in treating patients with pancreatic cancer that may or may not be removed by surgery (borderline resectable) or has spread from its original site of growth to nearby tissues or lymph nodes and is not amenable to surgical resection (locally advanced unresectable). Losartan may improve blood flow and allows for better tissue oxygenation. Hypofractionated radiation therapy delivers higher doses of radiation therapy over a shorter period of time and may kill more tumor cells and have fewer side effects. Giving losartan and hypofractionated radiation therapy may work better in treating patients with pancreatic cancer compared to hypofractionated radiation therapy alone.
Unfortunately, despite the best clinical efforts and breakthroughs in biotechnology, most patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer continue to die from the rapid progression of their disease. One primary reason for this is that the disease is typically without symptoms until significant local and/or distant spread has occurred and is often beyond the chance for cure at the time of the diagnosis. The lack of any treatment to substantially increase long term survival rates is reflected by the poor outcomes associated with this disease, specifically time to disease progression and overall survival. However, another important part of the body is now being looked at as a target for therapy against this disease - the immune system. Scientists have clearly shown that pancreatic tumor cells produce a number of defective proteins, or express normal proteins in highly uncharacteristic ways, as part of this cancer. In some cancers, these abnormalities can cause an immune response to the cancer cells much in the way one responds to infected tissue. In progressive cancers however, the immune system fails to effectively identify or respond to these abnormalities and the cancer cells are not attacked or destroyed for reasons not yet fully understood. This clinical trial proposes a new way to stimulate the immune system to recognize pancreatic cancer cells and to stimulate an immune response that destroys or blocks the growth of the cancer. This new method of treatment helps the immune system of pancreatic cancer patients to "identify" the cancerous tissue so that it can be eliminated from the body. As an example, most people are aware that patients with certain diseases may require an organ transplant to replace a damaged kidney or heart. After receiving their transplant, these patients receive special drugs because they are at great danger of having an immune response that destroys or "rejects" the transplanted organ. This "rejection" occurs when their immune system responds to differences between the cells of the transplanted organ and their own immune system by attacking the foreign tissue in the same way as it would attack infected tissue. When the differences between foreign tissues and the patient's body are even larger, as with the differences between organs from different species, the rejection is very rapid, highly destructive, and the immunity it generates is longlasting. This is called hyperacute rejection and the medicine used to immunize patients in this protocol tries to harness this response to teach a patient's immune system to fight their pancreatic cancer just as the body would learn to reject a transplanted organ from an animal. To do this, Algenpantucel-L immunotherapy contains human pancreatic cancer cells that contain a mouse gene that marks the cancer cells as foreign to patient's immune systems. The immune system therefore attacks these cancer cells just as they would attack any truly foreign tissue, destroying as much as it can. Additionally, the immune system is stimulated to identify differences (aside from the mouse gene) between these cancer cells and normal human tissue as foreign. This "education" of the immune system helps treat the patient because pancreatic cancer cells already present in a treated patient are believed to show some of the same differences from normal tissue as the modified pancreatic cancer cells in the product. Due to these similarities, the immune system, once "educated" by the Algenpantucel-L immunotherapy, identifies the patient's cancer as foreign and attacks. The chemotherapy combination to be used in this study has been shown to improve survival in advanced pancreatic cancer and is being combined with an experimental pancreatic cancer immunotherapy that stimulates the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer. One goal of this study is to determine whether chemotherapy and immunotherapies can work cooperatively to increase anti-tumor effects to levels beyond what would be seen with either treatment alone. In this experimental study, all patients are given a strong combination of anti-tumor chemotherapies while some patients are also given injections of an immunotherapy drug consisting of two types of pancreatic cancer cells that we have modified to make them more easily recognized and attacked by the immune system. We propose to test this new treatment protocol in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer to demonstrate that treatment with the immunotherapy increases the time until the tumor progresses or increases overall survival when given in combination with the current standard of care therapy for this disease.
The prognosis of patients with locally advanced unresectable pancreatic cancer is poor, and the median survival is less than 1 year. FOLFIRINOX therapy, which induces tumor downstaging sufficient to allow surgical resection, could improve the overall survival of patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Based on the FOLFIRINOX regimen for advanced pancreatic cancer, a phase II study of this regimen in patients with locally advanced unresectable and borderline pancreatic cancer is planned to determine the rate of conversion to operability.