Active clinical trials for "Leukemia"

The purpose of this study is to compare the effects, good and/or bad, of a standard chemotherapy regimen for AML that includes the drugs daunorubicin and cytarabine combined with or without midostaurin (also known as PKC412), to find out which is better. This research is being done because it is unknown whether the addition of midostaurin to chemotherapy treatment is better than chemotherapy treatment alone. Midostaurin has been tested in over 400 patients and is being studied in a number of illnesses, including AML, colon cancer, and lung cancer. Midostaurin blocks an enzyme, produced by a gene known as FLT3, that may have a role in the survival and growth of AML cells. Not all leukemia cells will have the abnormal FLT3 gene. This study will focus only on patients with leukemia cells with the abnormal FLT3 gene.

Amonafide is a DNA intercalating agent and inhibitor of topoisomerase II that has been extensively studied in patients with malignant solid tumors. Amonafide has also been studied in patients with AML. The purpose of this study is to assess the relative efficacy and safety of amonafide in combination with cytarabine compared to daunorubicin with cytarabine in subjects with documented secondary AML.

The purpose of this study is to assess the safety and tolerability of an 'AML Cell Vaccine' in patients with poor prognosis acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

Advances in the biological characterization of AML can now make a proper estimate of the risk of recurrence and likelihood of survival of different groups of patients according to the expression of different disease parameters. Karyotype, the molecular alterations affecting genes FLT3, NPM1 and CEBPA, minimal residual disease by flow cytometry and response to first induction cycle are variables that must be taken into consideration when planning the treatment of first line from a patient with AML. This breakthrough in the field of biology has not resulted yet in the development of new drugs really effective in the treatment of AML. Therefore, the core of the treatment continue to rely on the use of traditional chemotherapy combined or not with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell. Both treatments differ in their antileukemic efficacy, higher in aloTPH, as well as their toxicity and procedure-related mortality, increased also in the aloTPH. These aspects should be added that most candidates aloTPH patients lack an HLA identical sibling donor forcing the search for alternative sources and hematopoietic stem cell donors. These transplants alternative, but are not committed to their antileukemic efficacy, it does have implied a greater toxicity. Therefore, the ultimate effectiveness of these procedures depends largely on the proper selection of candidates for the same. While there is broad agreement in terms of induction chemotherapy using a combination of cytarabine with anthracycline, the choice of chemotherapy regimen is controversial postremisión today. In the poor prognosis of itself involve the LMA, patients classified as "favorable group" are acceptable disease-free survival with consolidation schemes involving high-dose cytarabine. For other patients appear to be inappropriate to combine cytarabine with an anthracycline, at least one cycle of consolidation, and raise the option of allogeneic different depending on prognostic markers

Patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have a poor long-term prognosis. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) in patients with CLL has only rarely been performed in the past because the clinical outcome after myeloablative conditioning was poor, mainly due to the high treatment-related mortality. However long-term disease-free survival after allogeneic SCT has been reported. Recently it has been demonstrated by our group and others that non-relapse mortality can be reduced significantly with the use of reduced-intensity conditioning regimens. Yet, graft versus host disease (GVHD) remains an important problem in this setting. Alemtuzumab is an effective drug for the treatment of patients with advanced CLL and has been successfully applied for GVHD-prophylaxis in the setting of myeloablative and reduced-intensity conditioning regimens. The goal of the present study is to evaluate the role of alemtuzumab as part of a fludarabine-based reduced intensity conditioning regimen for allogeneic SCT in patients with advanced CLL.

This study will investigate the efficacy and tolerability of a short (6 months) high dose therapy followed by a standard dose compared to a continuous treatment with a standard dose of imatinib (Glivec®) in pretreated Philadelphia chromosome- positive (Ph+)/BCR-ABL+ CML patients in chronic phase.

The aim of the study is to evaluate if the treatment with Alemtuzumab (after I or II line chemotherapy) administered for 6 weeks followed by 4 months maintenance treatment compared to a control group can reduce disease activity/residual disease and thereby delay the reoccurrence of the CLL disease.

RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy work in different ways to stop the growth of cancer cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Giving more than one drug (combination chemotherapy) may kill more cancer cells. It is not yet known which combination chemotherapy regimen is more effective in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia. PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying different combination chemotherapy regimens to compare how well they work in treating young patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Unrelated cord blood transplantation (UCBT) has been used for several years when there is no HLA identical sibling or unrelated donor.Since the recent publication of encouraging results after transplantation of two UCB units, the number of these double-transplantations increases in a very significant way.However, there is currently no prospective study comparing in a reliable way the double-transplantation to single-transplantation results.The investigators propose a prospective and randomized study comparing the results of single versus double unit UCBT in children and young adults (< 35 yrs) with acute leukemia in remission. This is an open, multicenter study carried out in the allogeneic transplant centers from the French society for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cell therapy. The primary objective is to compare the incidence of transplantation failure in the two treatment arms. Transplantation failure, the primary endpoint of the study, is defined by the occurrence of one of the following events : transplant-related death, second allogeneic transplantation or autologous backup infusion for primary engraftment failure, autologous recovery. The financial impact of these double-transplantations being to date unknown, the project also includes a cost-effectiveness study, the effectiveness criterion being a decrease in transplantation failure incidence. The secondary clinical endpoints are: overall survival and disease-free survival, relapse incidence, transplant-related mortality, incidence of severe infections and GvHD. The secondary biological endpoints are: hematological and immunological recovery, post transplant chimerism.

Prospective use of RT-PCR for PML/RARa might be used to guide a total tehrapy approach in APL, including refined diagnosis, front-line treatment, assessment of response and anticipated salvage therapy for patients who undergo molecular relapse.