Conditions: Small Cell Lung Cancer Extensive Stage Lung Cancer Chemonaive
Keywords: Small cell lung cancer Chemonaive Bendamustine Irinotecan Etoposide Carboplatin
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 30
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Small cell lung cancer, or SCLC, constitutes approximately 15% of the 170,000 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed annually in the United States. Extensive-stage SCLC comprises two thirds of new cases and is generally considered sensitive to chemotherapy, despite a median time to progression of 4 months. SCLC is one of the most aggressive and lethal types of cancer, with a median survival of 9 months (range 7-11 months) in patients diagnosed with extensive disease. Overall, the majority of patients with SCLC die in less than 2 years (2-year survival rates generally less than 10%), and the 5-year survival rate is 2.3% for patients with extensive disease. The regimen of etoposide in combination with a platinum (cisplatin or carboplatin) is generally considered the "standard of care" although a recent Phase III trial suggests improved survival with the combination of cisplatin/irinotecan. Further evaluation of new agents in combination regimens attempting to overcome the intrinsic drug resistance seen in extensive-stage SCLC is warranted attempting to improve survival and achieve palliation of disease-related symptoms.

Detailed description:
We are proposing a novel combination of bendamustine plus irinotecan followed by the standard regimen of etoposide with carboplatin. This will allow the investigation of response to the novel combination as well as any improvement in outcomes compared to historical controls.

Arms:
arm 1: This novel drug combination includes: Bendamustine, Irinotecan, and Etoposide/Carboplatin.

This study has only one arm but it incorporates two phases. Phase I utilizes a combination of bendamustine and irinotecan for Regimen A followed by etoposide and carboplatin for Regimen B.

Interventions: intervention 1: Novel Drug Combination
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: This novel drug combination includes: Bendamustine, Irinotecan, and Etoposide/Carboplatin. Subjects will be treated with irinotecan (150 mg/m2) infusion on Day 1 followed by infusion of bendamustine on Days 1 and 2 at increasing dose levels using a 3+3 design (starting dose of 80-mg/m2/d with 20 mg/mg/d incremental increase to max 120 mg/m2/d) (Regimen A). This will be repeated every 3 weeks for a total of 3 cycles. Restaging for response will be performed prior to the next regimen.

* All subjects will then be given carboplatin (AUC 6) on day 1 and etoposide (100 mg/m2) on days 1, 2 and 3 (Regimen B). They will receive 3 cycles of this regimen every 3 weeks prior to restaging.
* At the end (3 weeks after) of the sixth total round of chemotherapy, subjects will be re-evaluated for response, and will be followed-up for recurrent disease every 8 weeks.

Protocol document: