Conditions: Cancer
Keywords: erlotinib celecoxib radiation progression-free survival
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 47
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, with approximately 90% of deaths resulting from patients with metastatic spread. Save for notable exceptions such as testicular cancer, chemotherapy alone cannot cure patients with metastases. Some patients with limited metastatic deposits (most commonly colon cancer spread to the liver) can be cured with surgery followed by chemotherapy. Therefore, some patients with metastases should be considered for aggressive local therapy (surgery and/or radiation).

Even though chemotherapy has improved significantly, patients treated with conventional chemotherapy and/or biologically targeted therapy are not cured of their disease. For the most common types of cancer, chemotherapy alone can shrink or stabilize tumors for an average of 6 months before the tumors regrow. Both chemotherapy and biologically targeted therapy have major limitations preventing cure of these patients.

Radiation therapy is an effective modality of treating cancer. Until recently, radiation for metastases was used only to relieve symptoms resulting from local tumor growth. Technological advances, including stereotactic radiotherapy, allow for radiation to be more precisely delivered to the tumor while sparing nearby normal organs. Stereotactic radiotherapy can completely eradicate local tumors with minimal side effects. Stereotactic radiotherapy has never been combined with drug therapy. Sutent is a new F.D.A. approved cancer therapy that targets tumor blood vessels. It is effective against two types of cancer that rarely respond to chemotherapy (GI stromal tumors and kidney cancer). We propose combining biologically targeted drug therapy with physically targeted stereotactic radiotherapy. Our goal is to determine if this is a safe regimen and the best method of combining these treatments. Ultimately, our goal is to cure some patients with previously incurable metastatic cancer with this combination.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Participants treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy

Interventions: intervention 1: sunitinib malate (Sutent) intervention 2: radiotherapy
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Sutent administered PO QD from days 1 to 28 Two weeks after completion of any chemotherapy, maintenance Sutent in 6 week cycles (consisting of Sutent 50 mg PO QD weeks 1-4 followed by no treatment weeks 5-6) until progression or death If no chemotherapy is planned, maintenance Sutent (as described above) will start on day 43. intervention 2: Radiation is to be delivered to each site over 10 fractions separated by at least 16 hours. Up to 5 sites may be treated

Protocol document: