Conditions: Breast Cancer
Keywords: recurrent breast cancer stage IV breast cancer
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 5
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
RATIONALE: Giving chemotherapy, such as fludarabine and melphalan, before a donor peripheral blood stem cell transplant helps stop the growth of tumor cells. It also stops the patient's immune system from rejecting the donor's stem cells. The donated stem cells may replace the patient's immune system and help destroy any remaining tumor cells (graft-versus-tumor effect). Giving an infusion of the donor's T cells (donor lymphocyte infusion) after the transplant may help increase this effect. Sometimes the transplanted cells from a donor can also make an immune response against the body's normal cells. Giving antithymocyte globulin, cyclosporine, and methotrexate before or after the transplant may stop this from happening.

PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well antithymocyte globulin, high-dose melphalan, fludarabine, and allogeneic peripheral stem cell transplant work in treating patients with metastatic adenocarcinoma of the breast.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

Primary

* Determine the toxicity and tolerability of allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation after a nonmyeloablative preparative regimen comprising anti-thymocyte globulin, high-dose melphalan, and fludarabine in women with chemotherapy-refractory or poor-prognosis metastatic adenocarcinoma of the breast.
* Determine the ability of this preparative regimen to facilitate long-term engraftment of allogeneic stem cells and lymphocytes in these patients.
* Determine the response in measurable/evaluable disease and its temporal relationship to the preparative chemotherapy used and to the onset of clinical graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) in patients treated with this regimen.

Secondary

* Determine the progression-free and overall survival of patients treated with this regimen.
* Determine the tumor response and its temporal relationship to administration of high-dose chemotherapy and to the onset of GVHD in patients treated with this regimen.
* Determine the frequency and durability of the induction of full donor chimerism of lymphocytes in patients treated with this regimen.

OUTLINE: This is a nonrandomized, pilot study.

* Nonmyeloablative preparative regimen: Patients receive fludarabine IV over 30 minutes on days -8 to -4, anti-thymocyte globulin IV over 4 hours on days -7 to -4, and high-dose melphalan IV over 30 minutes on days -3 and -2.
* Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis: Patients receive cyclosporine IV (and then orally when tolerated) every 12 hours beginning on day -4 and tapered after day 42 (if no GVHD occurs) or after day 90 (if grade I acute GVHD occurs). Patients also receive methotrexate IV on days 1, 3, and 6.
* Allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT): Patients undergo allogeneic PBSCT on day 0. Patients also receive filgrastim (G-CSF) IV or subcutaneously beginning on day 0 and continuing until blood counts recover.
* Donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI): Patients who show disease progression or fail to achieve full donor type T-cell chimerism (at least 90% donor derived T-cells) by the 90-day assessment posttransplantation, and have no evidence of active GVHD may receive DLI. Patients who have unresponsive disease with no active GVHD receive subsequent DLIs every 6-8 weeks.

Patients are followed at 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 10 patients will be accrued for this study.

Arms:
arm 1: None

Interventions: intervention 1: anti-thymocyte globulin intervention 2: filgrastim intervention 3: graft-versus-tumor induction therapy intervention 4: therapeutic allogeneic lymphocytes intervention 5: cyclosporine intervention 6: fludarabine phosphate intervention 7: melphalan intervention 8: methotrexate intervention 9: peripheral blood stem cell transplantation
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None intervention 3: None intervention 4: None intervention 5: None intervention 6: None intervention 7: None intervention 8: None intervention 9: None

Protocol document: