Paclitaxel Treatment Options in Tucson, AZ

RATIONALE: Androgens can stimulate the growth of prostate cancer cells. Drugs such as luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone agonist, flutamide, and bicalutamide may stop the adrenal glands from producing androgens. Drugs used in chemotherapy work in different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining hormone therapy with chemotherapy may kill more tumor cells. It is not yet known whether chemotherapy given at the same time as hormone therapy is more effective than chemotherapy given after hormone therapy in treating prostate cancer. PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to compare the effectiveness of chemotherapy given at the same time as hormone therapy with that of chemotherapy given after hormone therapy in treating patients who have prostate cancer. Read Less

RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. It is not yet known whether polyglutamate paclitaxel is more effective than docetaxel in treating non-small cell lung cancer. PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to compare the effectiveness of polyglutamate paclitaxel with that of docetaxel in treating patients who have progressive non-small cell lung cancer. Read Less

RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining more than one drug may kill more tumor cells. It is not yet known which regimen of chemotherapy is more effective in treating stage IIIB, stage IV, or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer. PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to compare the effectiveness of polyglutamate paclitaxel plus carboplatin to that of paclitaxel plus carboplatin in treating patients who have stage IIIB, stage IV, or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer. Read Less

This is a Phase 3, open label, randomized study designed to compare the safety and efficacy of mirvetuximab soravtansine to that of selected single-agent chemotherapy (Investigator's choice) in women with platinum-resistant FR-alpha positive advanced EOC, primary peritoneal cancer and/or fallopian tube cancer. Read Less

Maintenance treatment of advanced stage squamous cell NSCLC. Phase III, randomized, open-label, multi-center study of nab-paclitaxel with best supportive care (BSC) or BSC alone as maintenance treatment after response or stable disease (SD) with nab-paclitaxel plus carboplatin as induction in subjects with stage IIIB/IV squamous cell NSCLC. Subjects who discontinued treatment from the maintenance part for any reason other than withdrawal of consent, lost to follow-up, or death, were entered into a Follow-up period that had a visit 28 days after progression or discontinuation. Those who entered Follow-up without progression continued with follow-up scans according to standard of care (SOC) until documentation of progression of disease. Additionally, subjects were followed for OS by phone approximately every 90 days for a minimum of 18 months, for up to approximately 5 years after the last subject was randomized. Read Less

This randomized phase III trial studies doxorubicin hydrochloride, cyclophosphamide, paclitaxel, and trastuzumab to see how well they work compared to combination chemotherapy alone in treating women with breast cancer that is human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive and has spread to the lymph nodes or high-risk and has not spread to the lymph nodes. Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Monoclonal antibodies such as trastuzumab can locate tumor cells and either kill them or deliver tumor-killing substances to them without harming normal cells. It is not yet known whether combination chemotherapy is more effective with or without trastuzumab in treating breast cancer. Read Less

This study is designed to compare the treatment effect of PEGPH20 combined with nab-paclitaxel (NAB) and gemcitabine (GEM) \[PAG\] to NAB and GEM \[AG\] in participants with Stage IV previously untreated pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). The study will have 2 run-in phases, one for each formulation of PEGPH20 (original and new formulations), and a Phase 2 portion. The 2 run-in phases will evaluate the safety and tolerability of the PAG treatment using the original and new succinic acid PEGPH20 formulation, respectively, compared with AG treatment. Phase 2 will have 2 stages due to a partial clinical hold that occurred from April through July 2014. The participants will be randomized in 3:1 for the run-in phases. The first stage will randomize participants in a 1:1 ratio. The second stage will randomize participants in a 2:1 ratio (PAG:AG). This is an open-label study. To minimize bias to the progression-free survival endpoint, disease progression will be based on the assessment of the Central Imaging Reader (CIR). Determination of clinical progression by the Investigator without corresponding CIR confirmation will be documented with the relevant signs and symptoms. Read Less

This is a Phase 3, open-label, international, multi-center, efficacy, and safety study of avelumab in combination with and/or following platinum-based chemotherapy. Eligible patients must have previously untreated, histologically confirmed Stage III-IV epithelial ovarian (EOC), fallopian tube cancer (FTC), or primary peritoneal cancer (PPC) and be candidates for platinum-based chemotherapy. The primary purpose of the study is to demonstrate if avelumab given as single agent in the maintenance setting following frontline chemotherapy or in combination with carboplatin/paclitaxel is superior to platinum-based chemotherapy alone followed by observation in this population of newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients. Read Less

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. Read Less

This is a phase 1, open-label, multicenter, ascending-dose escalation study of cemiplimab, alone and in combination with other anti-cancer therapies in patients with advanced malignancies. Read Less

Phase III Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Read Less

The main purpose of this research study is to compare the safety, tolerability, and anti tumor activity of an investigational drug, ABI-007 versus Dacarbazine in patients with metastatic melanoma who have not previously received chemotherapy. ABI-007 is a new preparation of the active drug paclitaxel. It contains the same medication as the prescription chemotherapy drug Abraxane®. Abraxane® is approved by the FDA for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer after failure of combination chemotherapy for metastatic disease or relapse within 6 months of adjuvant chemotherapy. Dacarbazine is approved by the FDA for the treatment of melanoma. In this study, ABI-007 and Dacarbazine will be tested as therapy for people who have not yet had any cancer treatment for the diagnosis of metastatic melanoma. Read Less