View clinical trials related to Breast Neoplasms.
Filter by:In 2005, the EBCIG demonstrated the efficacy of tamoxifen in improving overall survival in hormone receptor positive breast cancers. However, tamoxifen shows partial estrogen agonist activity, which is responsible for the drug's detrimental effects such as endometrial carcinoma, thromboembolism, and tamoxifen resistance. More recently, aromatase inhibitors have been shown to be superior to tamoxifen in the metastatic and adjuvant settings. The ATAC trial demonstrated improved disease-free survival (DFS) for 5 years of anastrozole compared to 5 years of tamoxifen 3. The BIG 1-98 trial results demonstrated that after a median follow-up of 25.8 months, letrozole improved DFS and distant DFS when compared to tamoxifen. Based on these results, adjuvant hormonal therapy with Aromatase Inhibitors (AI) has become the preferred therapy for post-menopausal woman. However, AI therapy is also associated with toxicities that merit in-depth studies, one of them being an increase in musculoskeletal pain. In the ATAC trial, at a median follow-up of 5.7 years, arthralgia was significantly higher (35.6% vs. 29.4%) and fractures were also increased (11.0% vs. 7.7%) when anastrozole was administered for 5 years following surgery with or without chemotherapy 3. The incidence of arthralgia was also significantly higher in the MA-17 trial, with 25% of patients receiving letrozole developing arthralgia compared with 21% in the placebo group following 5 to 6 years of tamoxifen 5. Traditionally in cancer clinical trials, the reporting of musculoskeletal pain has been based on the "Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events", which covers a wide range of symptoms and does not facilitate the documentation of a pain syndrome in a specific manner. Therefore, there is a need to design a study that will describe the nature of the pain associated with the administration of AI therapy using tools that have been validated for capturing a multidimensional phenomenon such as pain.
This is a two part study looking at the effect of lapatinib on concentrations of digoxin in the blood when both drugs are dosed together in Part 1; and looking at the safety and antitumor effect of lapatinib when used together with possible additional anticancer therapy as chosen at the doctor's discretion.
The purpose of this study was to give access to postmenopausal women with estrogen sensitive primary breast cancer to exemestane for the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer after the use of tamoxifen and to collect all serious adverse events.
The purpose of this study is to find a way to learn the hormone receptor status of a tumor before surgery is done. By testing for the hormone receptor proteins, doctors can find out if the breast cancer uses hormones to grow. This is important since the hormone receptor status of a tumor helps doctors decide if extra treatment like chemotherapy or pills are needed.
RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells. Giving radiation therapy during and after surgery may kill any tumor cells that remain after surgery. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying the side effects of giving radiation therapy during and after lumpectomy and to see how well it works in treating women with stage I or stage II breast cancer.
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as paclitaxel, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells. Giving paclitaxel and radiation therapy before surgery may make the tumor smaller and reduce the amount of normal tissue that needs to be removed. Giving chemotherapy after surgery may kill any tumor cells that remain after surgery. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying how well giving paclitaxel together with radiation therapy works in treating patients undergoing surgery for stage II or stage III breast cancer.
This study, conducted by the NCI and the George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC), will examine breast tissue from patients with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) for tumor markers and factors associated with angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels that is essential for tumor growth and spread. IBC is an extremely rare, aggressive form of breast cancer that disproportionately affects young women. The risk factors for IBC, its cause, and how it develops are unknown, but the disease appears to involve a high degree of angiogenesis. Tissue specimens for this study will be obtained from GWUMC's Inflammatory Breast Cancer Registry and Biospecimen Repository. The registry was established to develop a national registry of patients with IBC that includes standardized clinical, epidemiological, and pathological information, along with disease recurrence and survival data. For this study, tissue specimens from the repository will be tested for biological markers and angiogenesis parameters to help in the classification of the tumors. Biological markers (such as estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, the p53 gene, and others) and angiogenesis parameters (such as various proteins involved in vessel formation) will be examined to determine their prevalence in tissue specimens and their relationship to patient survival. When possible, the findings will be compared with non-IBC tissue samples.
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as epirubicin, docetaxel, and capecitabine, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Giving more than one drug (combination chemotherapy) may kill more tumor cells. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying the side effects of giving epirubicin together with docetaxel and capecitabine and to see how well it works in treating women with stage IIIA or stage IIIB breast cancer.
Primary Objectives: - To determine the feasibility of axillary reverse mapping (ARM) in patients undergoing axillary lymph node dissection for breast cancer therapy. - To determine the incidence of breast cancer metastasis in lymph nodes draining in the arm as identified by axillary reverse mapping. - To determine the safety of axillary reverse mapping.
New and better therapies for locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer are needed because, even if standard treatment is successful in shrinking the cancer, there is still a high chance that the cancer will recur. Recent research suggests that breast tumors have a small number of cells in them that are "breast cancer stem cells", which are very resistant to standard treatment. It is thought that the reason that many patients cannot be cured of their breast cancers is that the stem cells are unable to be killed and remain in the body after standard treatment. Laboratory research has shown that a new drug, MK-0752, can target stem cells and prevent tumor recurrences when the drug is combined with docetaxel, a chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat breast cancer. We know that MK-0752 is safe when given by itself to people. We do not know if treatment with MK-0752 and docetaxel combined is safe or if it will kill "breast cancer stem cells" in people with breast cancer. This clinical trial is being done to determine the safety of several doses of MK-0752 in combination with docetaxel. Preliminary data about the effectiveness of MK-0752 in combination with docetaxel will be collected. Also, tumor biopsy samples will be taken from some patients who have tumors that can be easily biopsied. The samples will be used to perform research tests to help determine if the "breast cancer stem cells" are being killed by the drug combination.