There are about 13446 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Belgium. The country of the clinical trial is determined by the location of where the clinical research is being studied. Most studies are often held in multiple locations & countries.
A randomized study to demonstrate the superiority of the Barricaid® when used in conjunction with limited discectomy, compared to limited discectomy alone, with regard to preventing reherniation and the recurrence of pain or dysfunction.
RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells. It is not yet known which radiation therapy regimen is more effective in treating patients with relapsed prostate cancer. PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying the side effects of radiation therapy and comparing two radiation therapy regimens in treating patients with relapsed prostate cancer after surgery.
The purpose of this Trial is to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of the Investigational Device for the treatment of ruptured Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) of the knee compared to Allograft.
Whole body diffusion-weighted imaging is a functional magnetic resonance imaging technique that characterizes tissue by probing changes in water diffusion secondary to differences in the tissue microstructure. These changes in water diffusion result in differences in signal intensity on diffusion-weighted-images that are quantified with the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). In malignant lesions, the extravascular extracellular space (EES) will be diminished, due to the increased number of cells. This will restrict water diffusion, identified by increased signal intensity (SI) on native DWI images and low ADC. Several studies indicate the value of DWI for differentiation of benign and malignant lymph nodes, detection of tumor recurrence and for ADC-based prediction of treatment outcome in various solid tumours (Koh DM et al, Am J Roentgenol 2007). Patients with a new diagnosis of Hodgkin or Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (only diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and PTLD) will be included in the study. These patients will receive a WB-DWI scan before treatment, once or twice during treatment (depending on the type of lymphoma) and after the completion of the treatment. The MRI scan will be performed on a 3 Tesla-MRI system without contrast administration and without exposing the patient to radiation. Whole body diffusion-weighted images will be prospectively interpreted by two experienced radiologists, blinded to all clinical and imaging data. Findings will be correlated to FDG-18F-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose fluorodeoxyglucose , biopsies performed in clinical routine (bone marrow always - soft tissue lesions if indicated) and imaging follow-up. The purpose of this study is: - to evaluate Whole body diffusion-weighted imaging for staging of lymphoma - to evaluate Whole body diffusion-weighted imaging as an early predictive biomarker for treatment outcome - to evaluate Whole body diffusion-weighted imaging for differentiating residual tumor from post therapy changes
Uterine cervical cancer is the second most common female malignancy. Therapy monitoring is essential to detect early recurrence. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging is an emerging MRI imaging technique which has a potential value for the detection of primary and recurrent disease and for the assessment of response to therapy. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the predictive value of DWI during and after therapy in the prediction of recurrence of cervical uterine cancer. It will be considered whether DWI is able to provide early information about the response to therapy. This could enable the identification of less- or non-responsive tumors and in this way therapy can be adapted as soon as possible. Hence the investigators could offer the patient a more efficient treatment scheme and a reduction in toxicity related to the treatment could be established.
The aim of the study is to assess the value of whole body diffusion weighted MR imaging (WB-DWI) as a non-invasive method. On one hand for pretreatment lesion detection and post-therapeutic tumor recurrence but also for early therapy monitoring with the intention to early identify patients with a poor tumor response. Our research group demonstrated that this technique is accurate in patients with head and neck cancer it could differentiate between viable tumor tissue and inflammatory or necrotic tissue at variable time points after completion of radiotherapy. In the literature it is stated that DWI can also predict the response to chemotherapeutic therapy. This is only true for focal MRI images (eg only in liver). This study aims to determine whether the whole body technique can efficiently be used because the distribution of metastases is systemic. The study includes two phases: In a first phase, a baseline study will be conducted; all possible injury types will be gathered to determine the variability in signal characteristics to finally determine appropriate thresholds to differentiate between benign and malignant lesions. This should allow us later on to perform prospective studies. In a second phase, different applications such as: - pretherapeutic staging - Detection of post-therapy recurrence - Early evaluation of systemic cytotoxic therapy. The results of the DW-MRI will be compared with those of PET, CT and conventional MRI which are now routinely performed for the diagnosis of colorectal tumors. The scans will be performed in a group of patients on a 3 Tesla MR system. This system is fully approved by the European and American standards and the patients will not be exposed to radiation or contrast agents. In principle, all patients treated for gastrointestinal cancer were included after informed consent from the patient. This study is important to investigate whether DWI is accurate in the pre-therapeutic injury detection and staging of gastrointestinal tumors compared with PET / CT and DWI. In addition it is important to predict the outcome after therapy.
The main objectives of the study are: -to unravel the importance of molecular phenotyping in predicting the response to classical anti-asthma treatment (inhaled corticosteroids) The investigators have developed a non-invasive technique based on mRNA analysis of induced sputum that enables us to study airway inflammation in detail. This technique forms the basis for our current project based on the following hypotheses: 1. different molecular asthma phenotypes exist: a Th2 phenotype and a non Th2 phenotype as reported by Woodruff and colleagues (Woodruff PG et al). Sputum mRNA cytokine levels can be used to diagnose Th2 asthma and discriminate this from non-Th2 asthma. 2. Based on our previous research and preliminary data that non-Th2 asthma can be further divided in Th17 asthma and Th1+Th2 asthma; besides these, a fourth group without Th2, Th17 or Th1 characteristics also exist. The investigators hypothesize that the epithelial cell cytokine, TSLP, can be increased as an early marker of airway inflammation in this latter group. 3. these subgroups have different responses to anti-inflammatory treatment.
The primary purpose of this Phase 2 study is to optimize Plasmin delivery by comparing different delivery regimens in patients with peripheral arterial occlusion. The study includes a blinded plasminogen activator treatment group and a blinded plasminogen activator placebo group. The study will also assess safety and tolerability of Plasmin at 150 and 250 mg doses.
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a frequent autosomal dominant disorder, caused by heterozygous mutations of the NF1 tumor suppressor gene (chr.17q11.2). One of the main clinical features is the development of benign and malignant tumors. The most common benign tumors in these patients are tumors of the peripheral nerve, named neurofibromas. Every NF1 patient has a life time risk of 8-13% to develop a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) starting from a pre-existing neurofibroma. MPNSTs lead to a bad prognosis for the patient, with an overall five-year survival of less than 25%. Complete resection is the standard treatment, but this is often difficult due to the size of the tumors and the location on important nerves, moreover the tumor is frequently metastatic at the time of diagnosis. For MPNSTs, like for other cancers, the extent and the spread of the disease at time of diagnosis is an important factor in determining treatment outcome. In this regard, the analysis of tumor derived cell-free circulating DNA in plasma of NF1 patients would open up the possibility to diagnose and monitor the development and progression of MPNSTs using a small blood sample. In cooperation with P. Schöffski (UZLeuven), we plan to collect blood samples from cancer patients to optimize the DNA extraction procedure starting from plasma samples. It is known that patients with cancer have a higher amount of free circulating DNA in plasma than individuals without cancer and therefore we want to optimize the DNA extraction procedure on plasma from patients with cancer. In the meantime, matching MPNST and plasma samples from NF1 patients will be collected and sent to us from the University of Eppendorf (Victor Mautner) to optimize the array CGH protocol for the detection of copy number changes in plasma DNA of NF1 patients with MPNSTs.
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a frequent, autosomal dominant disorder caused by heterozygous mutations (intragenic or microdeletion) of the NF1 tumor suppressor gene (chr.17q11.2). One of the clinical features is the development of benign and malignant tumors. The most common benign tumors in these patients are tumors of the peripheral nerve sheath, named neurofibromas (cutaneous, subcutaneous and plexiform). Every NF1 patient has a life time risk of 8 to 13% of developing a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) out of a pre-existing neurofibroma. In patients with a NF1 microdeletion (5% of NF1 patients), this risk is even twice as high compared to patients with an intragenic mutation. MPNSTs lead to a bad prognosis for the patient, with an overall five-year survival of less than 25%. To know more about the development and progression of these tumors, they will be screened by microarray comparative genome hybridization (Leuven) and full exome sequencing (Leuven). Further experiments will be done in cooperation (bidirectional) with the foreign labs of Victor Mautner (Germany), André Bernards (USA), Karen Cichowski (USA) and Yuan Zhu (USA). For all these experiments, we will make use of tumoral rest material removed from NF1 patients.