View clinical trials related to Brain Tumors.
Filter by:This is a study of amifostine to determine how effective it is in the reduction of infection in a high dose chemotherapy regimen with autologous stem cell rescue in children with high risk, relapsed or refractory pediatric solid tumors.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of the ketogenic diet on tumor size and quality of life in pediatric patients with malignant or recurrent/refractory brain tumors.
There are preliminary studies that suggest that radiation therapy to areas of the brain containing cancer stem cells (in addition to the area where the tumor was surgically treated) may help patients with high-grade brain tumors live longer. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the addition of stem-cell radiation therapy to the standard chemoradiation will further improve the outcome. The investigators will collect information about the patient's clinical status, disease control, neurocognitive effects, and quality of life during follow-up in our department. The purpose of the study is to improve the overall survival patients with newly diagnosed malignant brain tumors treated with stem cell radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The investigators will also measure how patients treated with this novel method of radiation therapy do over time in terms of disease control, potential neurocognitive side effects, overall function, and quality of life.
Background: - The Children s Oncology Group has established a research network, the Childhood Cancer Research Network (CCRN), to collect information about children with cancer and other conditions that are benign but involve abnormal cell growth in order to help doctors and scientists better understand childhood cancer. The CCRN's goal is to collect clinical information about every child diagnosed with cancer and similar conditions in the United States and Canada, to allow researchers to study patterns, characteristics, and causes of childhood cancer. The information can also help researchers study the causes of childhood cancer. To expand the CCRN, parents of children who have been diagnosed with cancer will be asked to provide information about themselves and their child for research purposes. Objectives: - To obtain informed consent from parents (and the child, when appropriate) of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults newly diagnosed with cancer to enter their names and certain information concerning their child into the Childhood Cancer Research Network. - To obtain informed consent from parents (and the child, when appropriate) of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults newly diagnosed with cancer for permission to be contacted in the future to consider participating in non-therapeutic and prevention research studies involving the parents and/or the child. Eligibility: - Parents of children who have been seen at or treated by a hospital that is a member of the Children s Oncology Group. Design: - Parents will provide permission to have personal information sent from their child s hospital to the CCRN, including the child and parents' names; child's gender, birth date, race, and ethnicity; information about the disease; and the treating institution. - Parents will also give permission for CCRN to contact the diagnostic laboratory to obtain specific information about the tumor or cancer cells. - Parents will be asked if they are willing to be contacted in the future to consider participating in CCRN research studies, and will provide contact information (name, home address, and telephone number) to be entered in the CCRN. - Parents or patients who change their minds about having information available in the CCRN can ask the treatment institution to restrict access to the identifying information. Parents or patients who refuse to have information included in the CCRN or be contacted in the future will still be able to enter clinical cancer research studies.
While neurocognitive impairments in attention, memory and executive functioning are commonly reported sequelae of childhood leukemia and brain tumors, studies have only recently begun to examine the treatment of attention deficits in this population. Numerous studies have examined the effectiveness of methylphenidate in the treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the effectiveness of this medication for improving attention and behavioral functioning in children with medical illnesses or brain injury are less clear. Patients will be randomized to receive one week of Metadate CD (a controlled release form of methylphenidate, similar to Ritalin) and one week of placebo in a double-blind fashion.
Maximizing surgical removal of brain tumors while minimizing neurologic deficits is challenging. Functional brain tissue may reside close to or even within the abnormality, and inadvertent removal or disturbance of such areas can result in neurologic deficits. At present, the gold standard for identifying critical motor areas in tumor surgery is intraoperative invasive direct current stimulation (DCS) through a handpiece. More recently, new non-invasive preoperative method for brain mapping, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), may be used to identify the eloquent motor areas. fMRI signals used in localization of the motor areas are generated when the brain is activated during the performance of specific motor tasks. However, as fMRI signals are also generated by sensory input, the resulting fMRI map may include sensory as well as motor areas. Nexstim has developed a Navigated Brain Stimulation (NBS) system that uses TMS with a software based Navigational System that together may have more specific spatial accuracy. This study aims to determine whether navigated TMS is able to identify the eloquent motor cortical areas in patients with brain tumors and to determine the clinical accuracy of the procedure by comparing it to results obtained by intraoperative DCS and fMRI.
- Primary Objective will be to evaluate the use of Ga-67 citrate as an alternative radiopharmaceutical for CSF imaging. - Secondary Objective will be to evaluate the biodistribution, pharmacokinetics and radiation dosimetry of In 111 DTPA and gallium-67 after intrathecal injection during remission of leptomeningeal metastasis (LM) and during LM occurrence, remission and recurrence.
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as topotecan, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Colony-stimulating factors, such as G-CSF, may increase the number of immune cells found in bone marrow or peripheral blood and may help the immune system recover from the side effects of chemotherapy. Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells. Topotecan may make tumor cells more sensitive to radiation therapy . Giving topotecan and G-CSF together with radiation therapy may be an effective treatment for brain stem glioma. PURPOSE: This phase I/II trial is studying the side effects and best dose of topotecan when given together with G-CSF and radiation therapy and to see how well they work in treating young patients with newly diagnosed brain stem glioma.
RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to damage tumor cells, but also damages normal cells in the developing brains of children. Combining low-dose radiation therapy in combination with chemotherapy should be effective in treating medulloblastoma while avoiding the long-term side effects of giving higher dose radiation to children with newly diagnosed average risk medulloblastoma.
RATIONALE: Vaccines made from a peptide may make the body build an immune response to kill cancer cells. PURPOSE: This phase I trial is studying two different vaccines to treat patients who have gastric, prostate, or ovarian cancer.