Conditions: Pancreatic Cancer
Keywords: Pancreatic
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 25
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The aim of this research project is to determine the amount of capecitabine (Xeloda) which can be given safely with PHY906 (investigational drug) on a novel schedule. It is also the aim of this research project to determine what the effects, good and/or bad, are of combining capecitabine (Xeloda) with PHY906 (investigational drug) in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer.

PHY906 is a powder from plants sold as a health food supplement in the United States. PHY906 has been used in China, Taiwan and other Asian countries as traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years.

The other drug involved in this study, capecitabine is an oral form of chemotherapy already approved by FDA in the management of colorectal and breast cancer.

Laboratory studies in animal models have shown that the combination of capecitabine and PHY906 shrinks liver cancer, and a pilot clinical study is currently evaluating this combination in patients with liver cancer to define the benefit. PHY906 has also shown to decrease diarrhea related to chemotherapy in a small study performed in patients with colon cancer treated at the Yale Cancer Center. Our recent laboratory studies have also shown that the combination of capecitabine and PHY906 also shrink pancreatic tumors in mouse models. This prompted us to test the combination of capecitabine and PHY906 in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer to assess the benefit in survival as well as any decrease in side effects, such as diarrhea caused by capecitabine.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: PHY906 800mg, orally, twice a day for days 1-4 and capecitabine 1500mg/m\^2 days 1-7 of a 14-day cycle

Interventions: intervention 1: Capecitabine intervention 2: PHY906
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None

Protocol document: