Active clinical trials for "Leukemia"

This phase I trial studies the side effects and best dose of tretinoin when given together with lithium carbonate in treating patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia. Lithium carbonate may stop the growth of cancer cells by blocking some of the enzymes needed for cell growth. Tretinoin may help [type of cancer] cells become more like normal cells, and to grow and spread more slowly. Giving lithium carbonate together with tretinoin may kill more cancer cells

The purpose of this study is to determine if low-dose imatinib and nilotinib combination, will improve treatment results in CML patients with failure, suboptimal response or intolerance to imatinib therapy. The hypothesis is that with low-dose imatinib and nilotinib combination, major molecular response will be achieved in patients not previously obtained with imatinib monotherapy.

B-precursor ALL is an aggressive malignant disease. Therapy is usually stratified according to risk characteristics to ensure that appropriate treatment is administered to patients with high-risk of relapse. In general, pediatric treatment regimens are more intense than those employed in adults and include courses of combination chemotherapy. Standard of care chemotherapy is associated with considerable toxicity. There is a lack of novel treatment options for subjects who relapse or are refractory to treatment. Therefore, innovative therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. Blinatumomab is a bispecific single-chain antibody construct designed to link B cells and T cells resulting in T cell activation and a cytotoxic T cell response against CD19 expressing cells. This study will evaluate the event-free survival (EFS) after treatment with blinatumomab when compared to standard of care (SOC) chemotherapy. The effect of blinatumomab on overall survival and reduction of minimal residual disease compared to SOC chemotherapy will also be investigated.

The hypothesis is that the replacement of the standard fludarabine and cytarabine based therapy by azacytidine could result in an improvement of RFS and OS rates in the experimental arm. To fulfill the medical needs in such frail and elderly population, improvements in terms of atileukemic efficacy in the azacytidine experimental arm should be attained without increasing the therapy-related toxicity or decreasing the patients QoL.

This is an open-label pilot study evaluating the safety and preliminary evidence of a therapeutic effect of ODSH (2-0, 3-0 desulfated heparin) in conjunction with standard induction and consolidation therapy for acute myeloid leukemia.

This phase I trial studies the side effects and immune response to DEC-205/NY-ESO-1 fusion protein CDX-1401 and decitabine in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome or acute myeloid leukemia. DEC-205-NY-ESO-1 fusion protein, called CDX-1401, is a full length NY-ESO-1 protein sequence fused to a monoclonal antibody against DEC-205, a surface marker present on many immune stimulatory cells. This drug is given with another substance called PolyICLC, which acts to provoke any immune stimulatory cells which encounter the NY-ESO-1-DEC-205 fusion protein to produce an immune response signal against NY-ESO-1. Immune cells which have thus been primed to react against NY-ESO-1 may then attack myelodysplastic or leukemic cells which express NY-ESO-1 after exposure to the drug decitabine. The chemotherapy drug decitabine is thought to act in several different ways, first, it may directly kill cancer cells, and secondly, the drug can cause cancer cells to re-express genes that are turned off by the cancer, including the gene for NY-ESO-1. Giving DEC-205/NY-ESO-1 fusion protein (CDX-1401) and polyICLC together with decitabine may allow the immune system to more effectively recognize cancer cells and kill them.

To determine the impact of maintenance therapy in patients with MDS/AML in remission.

This pilot clinical trial studies the safety and maximum tolerated dose of brentuximab vedotin when given with tacrolimus and methotrexate after unrelated allogeneic donor stem cell transplant in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or myelodysplastic syndromes. The addition of brentuximab vedotin to tacrolimus and methotrexate may result in a significant reduction of graft versus host disease in these patients.

This is a trial in patients with previously untreated CLL. Eligible patients will receive Lenalidomide with a backbone of Fludarabine and Rituximab for 6 therapy cycles. Lenalidomide will be increased by dose steps of 5 mg every cycle in the absence of limiting toxicity. If limiting toxicity ensues the patients will be treated with last tolerable dose for the remainder of the 6 treatment cycles. The first 5 patients will start with dose level 5 mg Lenalidomide and further escalating dose. After the fifth patient is included in the study, enrolment will be interrupted until this patient has finished his first treatment cycle. A safety board will evaluate the toxicities of the first 5 patients. If there are more than 2 patients experiencing a dose limiting toxicity (DLT) in the first treatment cycle, the starting dose will not be escalated and further 5 patients will be enrolled with a starting dose of 5 mg Lenalidomide. If only 2 or less patients experience a DLT in the first treatment cycle, the next 5 patients will start the treatment with 10 mg Lenalidomide. The rational for the higher starting doses stems from the lack of tumor lysis or tumor flare toxicity in this combination on the one hand and from the observation that the very slow escalation from 2,5 mg on led to a lack of efficacy in monotherapy trials due to early progression in a relevant number of cases. The increase of the Lenalidomide dosage should result in an increased efficacy especially at the beginning and a higher cumulative dose of Lenalidomide. The identification of patients intolerant to Lenalidomide by immunophenotyping of the T cells for validation is also part of this trial, because intolerance seems to be not dose dependent but may be caused by T cell activation. Therefore, early identification of patients intolerant to this form of modern immunochemotherapy and establishing efficient Lenalidomide based combination therapy is an important part of improvement of current CLL treatment.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a neoplasm of immature hematopoietic cells (blasts) with altered ripening capacity. Due to excessive proliferation, the blasts displace normal hematopoietic cells and bone marrow failure appears. Leukemic cells also infiltrate extramedullary tissues. Following the standard chemotherapy treatment, the CR rate achieved is around 65-75% for all patients and 15% lower when considering only patients over 65 years. Modifications to the standard regimen consist of replacing the DNR for a cytotoxic one, modifying the dose of ara-C or adding a third drug. Gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg ®) is an immunoconjugate between anti-CD33 antibody and a cytotoxic antitumor antibiotic, calicheamicin. Mylotarg ® antibody specifically binds to CD33, a sialic acid-dependent adhesion protein expressed in over 90% of LMA10. Mylotarg ® selectively transports the cytotoxic agent calicheamicin into leukemic cells and hematopoietic progenitors differentiated from the myelomonocytic line, while respecting the pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells. Calicheamicin is released only after the fixation of the antibody anti-CD33 and its internalization by the cell, after which binds to and damages the DNA. Mylotarg ® is approved in the U.S. for the treatment of CD33 positive AML in first relapse, for patients older than 60 years non-candidates for other intensive treatment modalities. Since the efficacy of Mylotarg ® is equivalent and its toxicity profile less than the conventional therapy, it is logical to conduct a phase II trial exploring the role of Mylotarg ® in the early stages of treatment of AML. Previous experience with gemtuzumab ozogamicin in relapsed patients led to its use combined with induction chemotherapy. The aim was to improve the CR rate reached with the latter and reduce relapse after achieving greater leukemic cytoreduction. Recent data from the HOVON group support that the administration of G-CSF before and during induction chemotherapy decreases the incidence of relapse in patients with AML, particularly those considered to have intermediate risk. Everything mentioned above justifies to investigate the combination of GO combined with chemotherapy with IDR and ara-C in standard 3x7 scheme and analyze the effect of sensitization with G-CSF in patients with AML de novo. If the treatment proposed here is effective and presents an acceptable toxicity it should be investigated.