View clinical trials related to Melanoma.
Filter by:RATIONALE: Riluzole may stop or slow the growth of tumor cells and may be an effective treatment for melanoma. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well riluzole works in treating patients with stage III or stage IV melanoma that cannot be removed by surgery.
This phase II trial is studying how well MEK inhibitor AZD6244 works in treating patients with stage III or stage IV melanoma. MEK inhibitor AZD6244 may stop the growth of tumor cells by blocking some of the enzymes needed for cell growth.
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.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are very small endogenous RNA molecules about 22-25 nucleotides in length, capable of post-transcriptional gene regulation. miRNAs bind to their target messenger RNAs (mRNAs), leading to cleavage or suppression of target mRNA translation based on the degree of complementarity. miRNAs have recently been shown to play pivotal roles in diverse developmental and cellular processes and linked to a variety of skin diseases and cancers. In the present study the researchers investigate the immunohistochemical distribution of Dicer in benign and dysplastic melanocytic naevi as well as in cutaneous malignant melanoma compared to intraindividual healthy control.
This phase II trial is studying the side effects of pazopanib hydrochloride and to see how well it works in treating patients with metastatic melanoma that cannot be removed by surgery. Pazopanib hydrochloride may stop the growth of tumor cells by blocking some of the enzymes needed for cell growth and by blocking blood flow to the tumor.
The goal of this clinical research study is to find the best dosing schedule of a combined treatment of PEG Intron® (pegylated Interferon-alfa 2b) plus a peptide vaccine (gp100) that may help improve immune response in patients that had Stage II or Stage III melanoma and are free of the disease. The safety and tolerability of this drug combination will also be studied. Researchers also want to collect long-term follow-up information.
The present protocol is a phase 2 study designed to investigate the potential application of allogeneic cell-mediated immunotherapy in metastatic solid tumors, similarly to the well established graft versus leukemia (GVL) effects, in patients with metastatic solid tumors resistant to conventional treatment modalities. Patients will be eligible to participate in a treatment program based on systemic administration of mismatched lymphocytes activated in vitro with rIL-2 (LAK) followed by rIL-2 inoculation in vivo. This treatment is aiming to induce an anti-tumor effect mediated by the efficient killing activity of the rIL-2 activated cells. Prior to cell infusion patients will receive the conditioning treatment with low dose Cyclophosphamide (Cyc) or Fludarabine with 2 injections of low dose alpha interferon. Cell therapy will be combined with specific anti-tumor monoclonal antibodies if available for the specific disease. Further activation of the anti-tumor activity of alloreactive donor T cells and natural killer (NK) cells will be accomplished by in vivo inoculation of rIL-2, aiming for enhancing the anti-cancer potential of donor-derived effectors cells. Patients will receive one - three cycles of cell therapy, as long as there are no signs of Graft- versus - Host - disease (GVHD) and the malignant disease is controlled.
The purpose of this research study is to use two different drugs to find where melanoma might spread and to remove these tissues. We believe that tumor cells from the melanoma first move through the lymphatic system (a system of clear fluid that moves around the body and carries white blood cells, much like the blood system) to a lymph node in an orderly way. If we can identify the first lymph nodes to receive a tumor cell, this can be removed and examined. We currently use one drug, called "technetium-99m sulfur colloid" which can detect about 90% of the first lymph nodes that the tumor cells would move to. Technetium-99m is a radioactive compound and can be detected through the skin by a special instrument that reads radioactivity. As part of this research, we would like to use a second drug called "fluorescein" (Fluorescite®) to see if it will identify the same lymph nodes or additional ones and examine these. This drug is fluorescent and can be detected even through the skin using a blue light. This drug is approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to for injection in the vein as a diagnostic aid and has been safely used in people for many years. In this study, we will be injecting it under the skin, which is a different use from how it is currently approved by the FDA. In the past another drug has been used, called "isosulfan blue" (Lymphazurin®), but availability of this drug is currently limited, and it has higher risks associated with it. This study is being conducted by Dr. Robert Andtbacka, Dr. Dirk Noyes, Dr. James McGreevy and at University of Utah. This study is a Phase I/II and is done to find out if the drug can be used safely when given under the skin and if it will work for this purpose.
Dendritic cells (DC) are the professional antigen presenting cells of the immune system. Multiple distinct DC lineage's exist and it is now well appreciated that the DC subset and the maturation stage of the DC determines the type of immune response, ranging from a TH1 or TH2 response to immune tolerance. The extremely potent capacity of mature DC to initiate immune responses can be exploited to fight infectious diseases and cancer. Others and we are currently using tumor antigen loaded mature DC in clinical vaccination studies against cancer, and clinical as well as immunological responses have been observed. Exciting new insights accompany the revival of suppressor T cells, now referred to as regulatory T cells (Treg), and implicate that also Treg play a key role in the control of immunity. Treg constitute a sub-population of CD4+ T cells constitutively expressing the IL-2R alpha-chain (CD25). Treg show remarkably suppressive activities on different components of the immune system, including T lymphocytes and dendritic cells, suggesting they act both at the initiation phase (DC) and at the effector phase (activated T cells) of the immune response. Interestingly, temporal depletion of Treg has been shown to enhance anti-tumor immune responses and in case of prolonged absence of Treg even autoimmunity. Furthermore, data in mouse tumor models indicate that temporal depletion of Treg also results in improved vaccine efficiency in the therapeutic setting, e.g. in mice with a pre-existing tumor. These data imply that in tumor bearing patients depletion of Treg prior to vaccination will improve vaccine efficacy. In this study we investigate the effect of regulatory T cell (Treg) depletion on the efficacy of DC-based anti-tumor vaccines in a clinical study using melanoma associated antigens tyrosinase and gp100-loaded DC and a depleting anti-CD25 mononuclear antibody (Daclizumab). Our primary objective in this study is the induction of an effective anti-tumor immune response. Our secondary objective is the induction of a clinical response.
We hypothesized that haploidentical NK cells kill tumor cells more efficiently than autologous NK cells, based on the missing-self hypothesis. Therefore, we performed this study to investigate the role of haploidentical NK cell therapy in patients with refractory or relapsed malignant melanoma.